El Barkla

art human. games too much. all work tagged #elbarklaart is mine. she/her 💜🤍🐀🖤

[elbarkla]

Happy pride, fellow asexuals <3 have some art!

Bonus doodle:

[elbarkla]

Y'all liked my mantis painting so much that I think it's time for a sequel! Here's Chilochorus circumdata, a weird lil ladybird who eats scale insects off fruit trees. Enjoy 🐞♥🥰

[elbarkla]

Happy Mermay! My first time participating 😊 . Please enjoy these manatee mermen running a turtle wash together 🐢

[elbarkla]

2026 update as a treat! Here's Steve 🥰

Bonus lore about my mer-matees:

they're always male (or else they'd be womanatees)

they love to work with turtles - it's their version of car culture

they're big beefy lads who give great hugs

they love to knit and work with kelp, rope, and various fibres

Enjoy! 🐢

[die-rosastrasse]

Favorite green pages from my gouache sketchbook 🌿🌼

[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 :')

[willowwithin]

Apparently I really like drawing seals 🦭

[willowwithin]

Fan art for the lovely @hi-res-tm

[elbarkla]

more like seal art for the lovely ME (check out my bestie's art everyone <3 <3 <3 )

[bhramarii]

When the sky still felt close enough to touch,

and gods were simply neighbors we carved into stone so we wouldn’t forget them.

(Sun-headed deity, Tamgaly — Kazakhstan)

[blueapplesiren]

I wonder how aliens will react to our communal grooming instinct? Like when you see something stuck to your homie’s clothes/skin/hair and it’s driving you nuts and you just gotta be like “hold still, lemme get that for you real quick.”

One time when I was a kid, I had a science teacher with a snake as a class pet, and said snake was almost done shedding. There was one little bit of dried skin stuck to its face and I was like, “would it hurt him if I pulled that off?” And the teacher said, “yes it actually could, it’s probably still attached to living skin if it hasn’t come off yet” and I was like “oh, sorry,” and he said, “that’s okay, you were just wanting to do the primate thing.” And damn, that’s such an accurate descriptor.

Anyways I hope aliens don’t mind me/my descendants having the urge to pluck stuff off of them. If they ask, we’ll have to tell them it’s a trait we evolved to survive ticks.

[kyraneko]

Sometimes you might feel the urge to help someone in a certain way, and sometimes they really don't want to be helped in that way, either because it would not help them (or even hurt them) or because they would rather do it themselves (for various reasons).

It's important to realize that sometimes you're going to be a primate and they're going to be a snake, and it needs to be okay if they do not want their skin pulled off at this time.

[elbarkla]

Ark ark! Drawing seals lately 🎨 🥰

[monstermonger]

He's worried about stepping on flowers. He loves nature.

[monstermonger]

Wow thanks everyone ;v;

Mini lore snippet lol: at first I just doodled the cat alone in the middle of a page, but I loved him so much I just turned the page and drew the whole thing. He's so great.

[wholesalemagnesiumoxide]

i think "bedtime abolitionist" is an unserious pejorative and i think less of people who use it. it's bad that children's lives are so heavily regimented, actually, and it'd be good for them to have more autonomy in these matters.

but, yknow. ruthless criticism of all that exists unless it makes you look like a whiny child, or something.

[jackawful]

I used to work extensively with kids and I am unironically a bedtime abolitionist.

Specifically at summer camp, I noticed that trying to enforce a bedtime would result in nights of me going cabin to cabin telling kids to be quiet repeatedly until 1-2AM. Then we would all be cranky and exhausted about it the whole week, and it made me come off like a controlling asshole to the kids cause...I was being a controlling asshole. And like, I was young enough to have really salient memories of having been a camper, so excited to talk to new friends that I didn't sleep - the kids had good reason to stay up!

So I figured out that I could, instead, lay out the first night that they could stay up as late as they wanted, and talk to their friends, as long as they were physically in bed with lights off. I would get a lot more sleep and was better able to function in the morning, and if a kid complained about being tired the next day, I would ask about how long they stayed up the previous night and let them connect the dots themselves. Inevitably, most kids would stay up really late the first night, and then they would self-regulate and get to sleep way quicker, because they were motivated to balance their own wants & needs instead of an adult breathing down their neck about an arbitrary externally-imposed sleep deadline.

I started extending this method to more things, trying to make sure my role was less Authority Figure and more resource for learning how to care for themselves. I went through college and found it was backed up by a lot of the research out there on parenting and teaching styles. Literally just respecting the autonomy of kids in my care and talking them through decisions instead of telling them what to do would make "behavioral issues" evaporate, and make both me and the kids happier. It helped even more when I started working with traumatized kids and teens in foster care after college. Sometimes a kid would even point out to me when a given rule in a workplace didn't make sense and I could give them an exception and/or go to my boss and try to get things changed. Often, arbitrary rules from higher-ups made things way more difficult for everyone.

Trying to explain this to authoritarian parents AND my worse bosses over the course of my childcare career was like pulling teeth.

Kids deeply crave autonomy and responsibility, and if you give them the former they will often gladly take up the latter, but you have to give them the chance to make their own choices and make non-life-threatening mistakes first. But to someone who views a kid as property, or even a well-intentioned perfectionist parent, the idea of giving a kid that autonomy is terrifying, so they try to make it sound absurd to justify maintaining control.

Anyway, yeah, bedtime abolition forever. The kids will do just fine without bedtime.

[feefal]

If you’re a fruit, make sure to NOT ferment your natural sugars into alcohol before your work interview.

[feefal]

Inspired by this diva

[claypigeonpottery]

new mug design. planning to add some colour to the flowers and such

[claypigeonpottery]

colour ☑️

[elbarkla]

Channeling this energy today 🌺 because I got the brain rot BAD 🧠but without brainrot 🧟‍♂️ one cannot 💚 begot 🌱 brainLIFE 🌈🌟

🌿🐸🐍🐛

[cherubheartz]

favorite phenomenon

[buteonine]

if you are "animal lover" and don't find the beauty and silliness stored in the humble leech then you should try

[a-book-of-creatures]

Reminder

They do this :3

[elbarkla]

🌞 Year of the Horse! Happy Lunar New Year 🌞