[velvetcloak]

Brooch by Marcus & Co., 1900. The Newark Museum of Art.

[visau]

I SUMMON POT OF GREED!

[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 :')

[fashion-runways]

LACEMADE Blue Iris Bird Dress pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com

[nonupeipe-serendipity]

If you could steal one thing from another ancient what would you want?

[all-mammal-creechur]

Proboscis Bat Rhynchonycteris naso

It is found from southern Mexico to Belize, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as in Trinidad. The bats are nocturnal, sleeping during the day in an unusual formation: most of them line up, one after another, on a branch or wooden beam, nose to tail, in a straight row.

In the photo, the two bats on the lower left are carrying young.

img source

[all-mammal-creechur]

I really love how dedicated these guys are to queuing.

[prokopetz]

A fun thing about fiction with large casts of characters is that sometimes you'll have a Spicy Bananas moment where every single character has an identical yet wildly atypical experience of some very mundane thing, and slowly you realise that the author isn't Making A Point, they just think that's normal.

[notsomeoneyouknow]

[fruutbaag]

[m-erminea]

[Image Description: Comment by @/shazzbaa reading "Slightly to the left but immediately reminded of the thing where every game Swery made had bonkers hunger mechanics where the protagonist has to be constantly shoving snacks into their face or else they pass out, and then Swery got diagnosed with reactive hypoglycemia. Had no idea he was making realistic hunger mechanics for him specifically."

Tags reading "The author's barely concealed undiagnosed disability." End ID]

[oscarcaselart]

Finally finished this whole set and took the opportunity to revamp the older ones. It’s been fun. Prints can be found here. https://oscarcaselart.tumblr.com/

[nyahalloshop]

Bat shorts with overskirt

[balamist]

estus flask upgrade

[romanceyourdemons]

watching game of thrones and this was considered a historically accurate portrayal of steppe nomads??? the faux leather strapless crops and faux leather yoga pants?????

[romanceyourdemons]

one thing this show clearly doesn’t get, which a lot of modern portrayals of premodern times don’t seem to get, is that in a preindustrial society where literally everything is handmade, people preferred (and prefer!) to take a little longer to make things beautiful. if you’re personally spinning and weaving and stitching every inch your new coat, you might as well take an extra afternoon to dye the fibers a really lovely yellow with some onion scraps, and spend a little longer to embroider on a nice pattern. if you’re personally carving every angle of every chair in your house, you may as well slow down and carve them with a beautiful and culturally significant design, especially if you know your great-grandchildren will be sitting in them. in a hyperconsumerist industrial society it’s expected that you just buy what you can afford and settle for however beautiful or ugly the thing happens to be, but it wasn’t always that way. the vast majority of people in the premodern world—men and women, rich and poor—were hobbyist artists, and they dressed in and sat on and slept under and smoked with and ate out of their and their ancestors’ canvases every day

[its-not-a-pen]

NO THIS LEGIT MADE ME SO MAD.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT REAL STEPPE NOMADS FUCKING WORE???

HERE'S THE FUCKING REFERENCES I CREATED FOR A XIONGNU-INSPIRED DND CHARACTER COMMISSION. AND THAT WAS SOMEHOW MORE RESEARCH THAN GRR MARTIN AND HBO COULD BE PISSED DOING.

vs

LOOK AT THE FUCKING ARTESTY. THE CRAFTSMANSHIP. THE EMBROIDERY.

One thing I don't see discussed enough about game of thrones is the blatant orientialism. hey quick question, why are the real cultures you were "inspired by" portrayed as basically human-orcs? 1) why are nomadic societies automatically portrayed as being incapable of valuing or producing sophisticated clothes, and why is that costuming directly linked to their "bloodthirsty" and "warlike" natures? did you know their IRL counterparts the xiongnu/jurchens/mongols/hu people LOVED the fancy silks produced by the han chinese. not only was this a key part of diplomacy between the two nations. (surprise! they were not constantly at war, because steppe nomads were not bloodthristy monsters who loved death, but real people engaged in resource competition and territory control). it was also part of the internal politics of steppe culture, e.g., who was favoured by the leader and how valuable gifts were distributed among the nobility. but noooo that would mean thinking of them as real people motivated by complicated things like politics, status and culture within their tribes! and who would watch a show about people doing that? -_- 2) why do their societies revolve around killing and conquest, and have no love for intellectual or artistic pursuits? historically, genghis khan, kublai khan, ect, valued scholars and did everything they could to patronise/kidnap/poach huge numbers of them, and this was key to their tactical success! han chinese engineers were captured, and used to build siege engines to take down the great wall! that portrait of kublai khan you see up there was drawn by the nepalese artist araniko, a child prodigy who was part of the khan's court. does khal drogo have a flock of artists following him around, propagandising his greatness to the world, so everyone knows that he is a man of culture and his rule has legitimacy? no, he burns down villages for fun? cool. cool cool.

3) why are the dothraki portrayed as lawless brigands who are incapable of governing their captured territory, when the mongol-led yuan dynasty managed to conquer and rule over china, and genghis khan was responsible for expanding the silk road, and enforcing such effective law and order over it that it resulted in the pax mongolica, and increased trade between the east and west? is it because they "don't wanna?"' why? are they a monolith? why would they throw away the advantages of all that trade control? are they just "intrinsically incapable of it?" would you care to expand on that?

picture references:

clothing of a Xiongnu chief, 2nd century BCE-1st century CE. Reconstruction by archaeologist A.N. Podushkin, in the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan.[77][78]

Noin-Ula carpet, animal style. 1st century CE.[236]

Xiongnu Leather Robe, Han period, Henan Provincial Museum, Zhengzhou

Belt buckle with animal combat scene, 2nd-1st century BCE, made in North China for the Xiongnu.[267][157]

portrait of Kublai Khan by artist Araniko, drawn shortly after Kublai's death in 1294

[libertineangel]

Zoot suits look kinda stupid but I gotta respect the cultural context & symbolism of the things

"Fuck the military and fuck the war, look at all this good uniform-worthy fabric I'm wasting on a fuckoff giant suit" is a very solid basis for a subculture

[knxfesck]

I actually really love to talk about zoot suits and their associated subcultures. The amount that the silhouettes of the zoot suit have shaped american fashion and trends of oversized clothes is so understated. And, yk, I'm biased as hell, but it is kinda crazy how influential zoot suit culture was

I always love the og zoot suits made by black americans in Harlem, I really like looking at the changes from these clothes from the 30s to some of the more exaggerated renditions from the 40s. It's also so interesting to look at how fast the subculture spread, and especially in the american west integrated with mexican diaspora and pachuco culture to the point that that's what a lot of usamericans associate them with.

⬆️ long wallet chains and pork pie hats were classic accessories for mexican diaspora zoot suiters. Zoot suits/their components were also really popular with women and were a way to symbolize independence and a choice to move away from strict gender roles on top of the existing countercultural message ⬇️

Anyways it's kind of impossible to talk about zoot suits without mentioning the racism and violence that followed them. On top of a zoot suit making someone a target for individual racial violence, the national reaction of white america to zoot suit culture was part of the beginning of clothing and presentation being read explicitly as signals by police and justice systems, and the broad association of youth of color with gang violence through this specific excuse. Gang culture and how it's percieved in the western US and especially California is very influenced by this era. The most famous events from the zoot suit era are the collective zoot suit riots and the media characterization of all mexican american, filipino american, and black american youth as violent anti-american baby gangsters. Which, even if that was broadly true I mean. I'll take the opportunity to be flippant hell yeah??

As a side note, while making more new zoot suits during war rationing was pretty sick, most people weren't buying from the black market tailor shops and just wore what they already owned because the style had been popular for years already. People bought clothes less often to begin with back then. I think that misconception comes from the reasoning white americans gave to go beat up people of color with baseball bats in the street; i.e. it was racial and xenophobic violence to begin with and the nature of the suits themselves has been mushed around a lot to serve different narratives.

More zoot suits! ⬇️

They can definitely look kinda goofy- mostly the exaggerated cuts and badly tailored modern recreations- but like you said you gotta respect them.

[blackfilmmakers]

"The ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit" - Cab Calloway

[specialagentartemis]

A lot of us learned certain theory terms--intersectionality, compulsory heterosexuality, Death of the Author--on social media. It's great to be able to discuss them! But it's important to know what you're discussing.

Kimberlé Crenshaw was the Black feminist scholar who coined the term "intersectionality." You can read her initial article coining and describing the theory "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics" (1989), her follow-up article expanding on it "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color" (1991), and a (shorter and easier to read) interview with her about what she meant and what she thinks about it "Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later" (2017).

Adrienne Rich was the lesbian feminist scholar and poet who coined the term "compulsory heterosexuality" in her article "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980).

Roland Barthes was a French literary critic who coined the term "death of the author" in his essay "La mort de l'auteur" (The Death of the Author") (1967). This one is 6 pages long.

These are available on the internet - I highly recommend reading them and going straight to the source of what the authors said, and decide how much you agree with them and the uses they get put to!

[rederiswrites]

There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.

[alexseanchai]

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?

[rederiswrites]

I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!

[pandorasquillandquotes]

Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.

[vaspider]

A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.

Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...

[foxofninetales]

I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.

[electronsprotonscroutons]

Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar

[magneticdeclination]

The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come

[doctornerdington]

Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.

[bitchwhoyoukiddin]

DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.

I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.

[calystarose]

Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm

[genginger]

The guy who wrote Salt (Mark Kurlansky) also wrote books about cod and milk!

[fashion-runways]

Hunter Schafer attends the 2026 Met Gala celebrating "Costume Art" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Julian Hamilton/Getty Images) pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

Hey, wanna make music? Yeah? Got a buncha money? No? Well that's perfectly fine, check this free stuff out:

Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)

Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.

Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.

Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.

The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).

BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.

Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.

Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.

This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!

sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.

Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.

Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.

Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.

Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.

Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.

Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.

Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.

MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.

Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).

Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.

ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.

UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.

Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.

TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.

Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.

Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.

Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.

fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!

WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!

aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made awhile back :P

As for DAWs, it's been a long while since I've used anything other than FL Studio (not counting Audacity, which I still occasionally use for specific purposes), which, while being the only one I can directly recommend, is paid. However, I've heard good things about Reaper which has a "free trial" that you can technically use forever, akin to WinRAR. Additionally, I've also heard some good things about Waveform Free.

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

(tags from @secretroomba) Ok saving these tags for later for myself

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

MORE because there are some additional little things I forgot about:

Geonkick - A drum synthesis VST, especially simple to get kicks going, but capable of producing a multitude of sounds.

plugdata - A visual programming environment for plug-in projects, that people produce their own plug-ins for, such as infamous plug-in the gusher.

SoundThread (info in description) - A really cool node-based audio editing interface based on the Composers Desktop Project, great for sound design, although it currently only supports .wav files.

OpenUtau - An open source software for UTAU voicebanks like Kasane Teto, much easier to work with imo than the original UTAU software for a beginner to vocal synths like UTAU and Vocaloid.

Famitracker - More NES style chiptune stuff, this one's a classic standalone tracker program.

Furnace - Another tracker I've heard fantastic things about from chiptune artists, more fully featured and capable of producing a wider variety of sounds.

[shpepyao]

His Majesty doesn't need any pants Regent character exploration

[whichfeedsthefire]

"dear, i know your kind doesnt have any genitals, but could you at least PRETEND to have some decency?"

[shpepyao]