NeoMikey Has a Tumblr @neomikey - Tumblr Blog

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 :')

animentality

uneryx

Emergency Commissions

This... had been a bad month. My cat was diagnosed with cancer, and the vet bills ran me through the absolute wringer. On top of that, I found out the hard way, just now, that I didn't get paid for the recent stat holiday due to my show's unusual schedule. So I'm like $200ish short on my bills. If you guys want any art - hell, even just some basic-ass sketch - and can slice me a little dough, I would REALLY REALLY appreciate it. I kinda need it because I've gotten SERIOUSLY fucked over in the money department this month. So uh, yeah. kofi | vgen Thanks in advance :(

mioxenoblade

When I say “free water, free food, free shelter, free healthcare, free education for everyone” in that “everyone” I even include the people I hate. Too many people get surprised at the idea that I do wish for the people I hate to have better lives.

mioxenoblade

When I say EVERYONE, I mean EVERYONE. These are things ALL people should have. If you reblog this saying “except THIS group” then you’ve missed the point entirely.

generaljinjur

salmonandsoup

i want to remove the boots from necks altogether, not just be the one to put on the boot.

nentuaby

Don’t know about OP, but when I say it, this is not selflessness! It’s not selflessness at all. There are still people I would prefer get fucked over! There are really awful shitty people in the world!

But I understand that the tables always turn. ALWAYS. There is no final glorious revolution where The Right People will be in charge forever. The only way to ensure the boot will never be on your neck again is to throw away the fucking boot. Set the table so you eat well no matter which way it turns!

thatonebirdwrites

ALL OF THIS. Leave no one behind. We all deserve food, clean water, clean air, healthcare, housing, electricity, internet, and so forth. No matter who you are, you deserve to be able to access and have what you need to survive.

So yes, yes, yes to “throw away the fucking boot.”

xenogears

Shout out to the (many) times I got called an elitist gatekeeper for saying that the only real way to fully understand a work of fiction is to experience it firsthand and that summaries and reviews are not a replacement for that

the-lincyclopedia

Me, reading the first 80% of the post: What do you mean, "experience it firsthand"? How am I supposed to join the Hunger Games or go on the Odyssey?

Me, reading the final clause of the post: Oh, you literally meant that people have to read the book/listen to the audiobook in order to fully understand it. And people got mad. Oh dear.

marisatomay

To quote what a friend of mine said after she watched Jerry Maguire (1996) for the first time, having thought she knew what it was about because of its cultural ubiquity: “you miss a lot of a movie when you don’t watch it”

Out of Touch

Out of Touch Thursday

arbyscurlyfries666-deactivated2

OUT OF TOUCH THURSDAY

snuv

but im out of my head when you’re not around…

rockmilkshake

happy birthday.

saltwatersweets

this is the only out of touch thursday you can reblog this

thevulturesquadron

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

rudjedet

And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", but it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.

smol-blue-bird

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

smol-blue-bird

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

smol-blue-bird

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

theriu

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

thememedaddy

yasmin1000000

“So basically my couch has electricity and I use it to charge my battery powered doorbell”

“Okay that makes sense”

la-reine-du-disco

Now explain it to a Japanese samurai from the year 1218

rui-cifer

"do you know how waterwheels grind up grain in a water mill using the force of running water? We found a way to create a huge source of force that runs all the time and can transfer its force over long distance. I can tell you in more detail, but that's the basics. Now that is a chime that has a mechanism that one can press instead of having to open the door to let you know that you are waiting to be let in. It requires the transferred force to make the mechanism work and that wire is how we transfer the force to the chime."

sizhens-deactivated20250415

mediocrefantasy

i love these sort of posts because they feel like a vision of a kinder and more thoughtful world that I wish more than anything was the mainstream instead of the exception

the-cuix

So, what do you say? Why not help one another on this lonely journey?

bitchesgetriches

Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology's screwups.

Delicious. We love to see it.

tobaeus

@ralfmaximus

ralfmaximus

Ultimately, she spent 20 hours redoing the copy from scratch — and with her $100-per-hour rate, that meant her client was shelling out $2,000 for copy that likely would have ended up being far cheaper had a human just written it in the first place.

I love stories like this.

tacofriend

Get peer reviewed!

lierdumoa

forthesakeofthespirit

doves and pigeons being basically identical scientifically speaking is so important to me.

the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, of God's immeasurable love and mercy come to intercede for us. is the same bird as the common "flying rat" of the cities, the slums, the poor, dilapidated areas that most folk would never willingly go.

even there. there is God. and He comes scruffy and dirty