Lizards and frogs and snakes, oh my!

That leaves two more, and I'm torn between:

Green iguana: Our other Junior Herpers leader always brings an iguana her to events, and kids love them. They're highly recognizable, too.

Corn snake: Extremely popular pet around here, another child/crowd favorite.

Hellbender: Not native to Chicago, but a popular conservation project, native to IL, and charismatic AF (if you like snot-covered muppets, WHICH I DO).

Cricket frog: I have 2 inch sticker blanks, so I could do this life-sized like I'm doing with the baby massasauga. The nature museum we have junior meetings at does a survey of these every year, so they're really relevant.

Bearded dragon: Everybody loves these.

Axolotl: Everybody loves these and for some reason they are EXTREMELY popular with little girls right now. Herps are for everybody but I always want to encourage a little girl's love of slimy things, y'know?

Alligator: Chance the Snapper is still relevant around here.

Fox snake: Unlike corns, actually local. People have become very, very interested in our native ratsnakes recently (I have actually been asked how to attract them!) and fox snakes are pretty- and a lot of our membership lives in the Fox River valley so there's that.

Western hognose: Native to IL, threatened in IL, and they're very cute and dramatic.

Sulcata tortoise: Somebody always brings a sulcata to our meetings. I think I'd do this one with some shading and cracks like it's crashing through the sticker.

Little spider on a picnic bench at the lake

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.

Giraffe from the zoo part 2

Scanner recommendations appreciated! Id like to get some good quality scans of these cards and maybe get some prints done.

I love how she immediately changed what I was trying to train (orange means you get food in your enclosure) to "If I'm eating in my enclosure, I must be touching orange the whole time."

She always has one foot on the orange when she's eating in there. She could take it elsewhere, but then she wouldn't be touching orange anymore, and that's not ok for some reason.

Unless, of course, she's eating outside the enclosure, and then anything goes.

Little spider on a picnic bench at the lake

Tried to do a broken border for this one! Phone camera quality is meh, may repost when I do get a scanner lol

Mr Phidippus cardinalis appeared yesterday afternoon and made my day. ❤️

P. cardinalis boys appear to be velvet ant mimics. It works.