i need direction to perfection

There is nowhere in the world I'd rather be than right here with each and every one of you. We might come back next season, but things will never be the same as they are right now in this moment. All of us, right here, are the original Rockford Peaches.

greta grabbing carson and jo excitedly while yelling, "God, we're all fucking fruit!"

the peaches in the dressing room where esti excitedly catches her baseball glove and poses with the other cheering around her.

shirley and maybelle talking in their shared room, shirley is leaning on a dresser and says to maybelle on the bed casually, "One day you're walking around liking men, and then the next... lobotomy."

the peaches all gathered around shirley in a circle celebrating her.

the peaches all standing in front of carson, jess yells angrily, "There's no crying in baseball!" she then stomps off.

both lupe and carson standing side by side as coaches and do the sign to their team member completely in sync.

maybelle and greta are in the dressing room with the other. maybelle says, "But now he might die." greta puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder and replies, "And that's his problem," and puts her hand down on front of them to emphasise this.

all the peaches and beverly gathered on the stairs of their house, singing together.

lupe and jess sitting on the coach next to each other with carson leaning on the back of their seat as lupe says, smiling, "Just a bunch of idiots."

a shot from the bottom-up of all the peaches gathered around in a circle looking at each other.

Plain text caption: There is nowhere in the world I'd rather be than right here with each and every one of you. We might come back next season, but things will never be the same as they are right now in this moment. All of us, right here, are the original Rockford Peaches.

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

❌ Does this ship make any sense whatsoever by any reasonable metric