Starborn are just batteries with unlimited energy!

Icons usually by @Bukoya-Star | On twitter: @Dr_Vulpine | the Sky: drvulpine | Other places I use a different handle: Steam & varioius: Omega_2  |  Discord [private]

[yugirimistwalker]

wingull becomes exponentially better when you remove the wings

[yugirimistwalker]

[dr-vulpine]

Throwable. Accepted.

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

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

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

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

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

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

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

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??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

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 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

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!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

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

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

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

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

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.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[charl0ttan]

dog i gotta move like yesterday

[oddarette]

Yep, I made a frutiger aero soft soap alien… 💧🐠🤍🫧🧼

[bruzum]

[dr-vulpine]

"It says that's a 'premium feature'."

[yinyanggio]

-I don't remember these tv shows/movies.

[gonsplode]

[a-book-of-creatures]

Mutuals feel free to pick me up and drop me off in front of prime real estate that’s all mine

I will be scared but I will appreciate it

[emjoy398]

[dr-vulpine]

Begin exploring the Mystery Dungeon™

[maxwellmcgrath]

remember when mattel released a t-rex extroyer toy that vomited its own skeleton for no apparent reason

[cheddar-baby]

[wizardshark]

Gonna want the sound on for this one boys

[randomdeinonychus]

One of the all-time great videos.

[battlefem-deactivated20170404]

you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:

[itsoldjohn]

that last one is literally a LOOK

[cassiocantdrink]

yes!

but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:

AND the guy developed color slide processing as well. as a person fairly familiar with modern b/w processing at home, but never EVER stepping into color (negatives or slides) territory, i’d say, BAMF to the highest degree. 

[petermorwood]

Here are a few more Prokudin-Gorskiy / Gorskii shots, and a reminder once again that these aren’t recently colourised BW images but original colour photos taken about 120 years ago. Many colourised pics don’t look this good. Some modern colour pics don’t look this good (as I know all too well. “Delete image Y/N? Y!”)

This is Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”.

Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara…

…and his Minister of the Interior.

A Type B-15 steam locomotive…

Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berries…

The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya Ladoga…

…and a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.

Unlike some current selfies ;-> he’s not dominating the image, so here’s a closer shot.

Nice hat…

[fishthingdaily]

Today’s fish thing are the Medetai trains, a line of fish themed trains in Kada, Japan! Images from here and here and here and here

[mintywhisker]

between the lions 📚🦁

my piece for the our turn to thank you! fan zine

[mintywhisker]

people keep asking about cliff hanger— he’s very faintly in the tv :]

[alexstrazsa]

Just unmute it.

source

[kawaikunaii]

my constant internal dialogue

[ookyspoopyme-deactivated2018070]

OH MY GOD

[edenwolfie]

[gloomsday]

sent this message to my coworker today and he sent me this screenshot with microsoft teams's suggested replies... incredible 10/10 no notes.

[pkpaulshow]

[aflo]

Everything feels like this now

[dr-vulpine]

Man, if only Just Cause 2 Multiplayer had the physics to back it up, this would've been identical

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

[delicatefury]

I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Thank God someone bothered to check.

[json-derulo]

I have a wild idea. what if we supported our claims of fact by linking to a reliable source. better yet, what if we went hogwild and just straight up linked to the actual unpaywalled study

[taphappy52]

per the article from prev:

We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none. There’s still a lot out there, and that’s the problem,” said McNeil, senior author of the study and U-M professor of chemistry, macromolecular science and engineering, and the Program in the Environment.

As microplastic researchers looking for microplastics in the environment, “we’re searching for the needle in the haystack, but there really shouldn’t be a needle to begin with,” said Clough, a recent U-M doctoral graduate.

like don’t get me wrong i’m very glad it’s not nearly as bad as it was originally stated to be, and glad that someone finally thought to double check for contamination from the gloves. but it doesn’t mean the concern about microplastics is completely unfounded.

[dr-vulpine]

Yeah. I always figured they washed the gloves to get that crap off, but I guess they didn't bother.

This coming from a guy that had a small fragment of plastic in one of his fingers. Started as what looked like a blister, it got to size, then it slowly turned green. At that point, I was poking at it and it felt solid, so I fired a sharp edge, and slowly scraped at it until I broke it and pulled out plastic. To this day, I still can't figure out where it might have originated from.

[parkchanwoohoo]

How does this eve-- whatever