Hello, Dearest

art blog writes and draws sometimes they/them gadigal/sydney, australia

[thepengham]

I know you.

***

a little celebratory sketch for my little Make 100 kickstarter project reaching its funding goal yesterday!!!!

I'm making 100 custom lucky clay charms of Przewalski's horses/takhi, to celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse and start a conversation about conservation :)

If you would like to get a little custom hand-made lucky horse charm or a print, consider backing my kickstarter below! I yap a lot about cave paintings, takhi, and chinese puns.

Any additional horses that get made from the funds raised I'll be selling after the campaign's finished, with 50% of those profits donated to the International Takhi Group for their continued work on takhi conservation, and supporting Mongolian steppe communities!

Make 100: Year of the (Przewalski's) Horse - 100 Clay Horses

Celebrate the Year of the Horse with your own unique lucky takhi clay charm, and start a conversation about conservation!

[jay-rayart]

FLY is a story about a boy who gets a second chance. Help his story take flight June 9th 11am EST on Kickstarter. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings I hope this story lifts the world to a brighter place.

Coming soon: FLY : A Magical Black Boy Series - Pilot Animatic

A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.

[butterflypeaflowertea]

trees are very 🥺 because sometimes i’ll stand under the shade of a tree and look up at it and it’ll sway its branches about in the wind and i’m like oh my God i’m alive and YOU’RE alive. we are alive together and made up of the same starry stuff and standing right next to each other in this moment on this earth. do u feel it when i reach out and press my hand to your trunk? can you hear me? i think you’re so neat. and then the sunlight filters through its leaves just so and that lovely green color leaves me dazzled. it’s just very nice to be an alive thing next to a different sort of alive thing

[h4nds4ndwich]

“It’s just very nice to be an alive thing next to a different sort of alive thing” I’m in love

[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 :')

[ivytea]

requiem for vanished birdsong

[onvochn]

[internetwes]

[charmandabear]

I can't believe you forgot the best part

#regret

[themainspoon]

There's so many horror games about having to try to weed out and deal with inhuman imposters, but I want one where the script is flipped. You are something inhuman, you are an imposter, and if you want to survive you have to blend into a world that is trying to hunt you down and destroy you. You aren't human, but you must masquerade as one and infiltrate their world, or you will die.

[themainspoon]

I actually think we need to start inverting more Horror premises/tropes.

Like "You have to venture into the scary insane asylum!" VS "You're a patient who was admitted by force to an asylum, and you are very clearly in real danger, but everyone is pretending that you're just deluded, and are essentially leaving you to die because they don't really see you as a person."

I feel like there's a lot of Horror tropes built off of the fear of the other, when in reality it's actually often the other who is in danger. Maybe we could start recognising that more.

[themainspoon]

Interesting how the first half of the post has picked up popularity while the second part, which perhaps clarifies the idea of the original post, hasn't.

It's been interesting to see what media people are recommending based on the first post alone. A lot of recommendations for games/franchises like World of Darkness, Carrion, Kill All Humans, Among Us, etc. It's interesting because these are games that put you into the shoes of the violent other that has to infiltrate, without actually challenging the idea that the other is a threat. They actually parrot the ideas of the other as violent.

Funnily enough, the people recommending the comedy game Octodad understand the post much better than most of the people recommending horror media. A few mentions of Am I Nima, which isn't finished yet but does look like it could be what I am describing, so brownie points to the people recommending that.

But everyone saying stuff like "This is just being Trans/Autistic/Etc" really gets it, like really really gets it. Horror always communicates the fears and anxieties of the people who create it, this post was basically: "What if instead of communicating the fear of the other, we communicated the fears of the others, which are actually vastly more legitimate than the dominant groups fear of the other. We should recognise that it is overwhelmingly the others who are the ones who actually suffer and die, all for the perceived "saftey" and "comfort" of the dominant group."

This idea is about transphobia, it is about ableism, about anti-imigrant rhetoric and white supremacy, about queerphobia, it's about all of it. It is horror from the perspective of minority groups. It is the twisting of a trope built upon reactionary fears and narratives in order to critique them, it is a direct allegory for all those experiences you are describing.

Overall, it's just interesting to see who gets it and who doesn't.

[jayalaw]

This is being marginalized, hands down

[desertedinurban]

HIGH FASHION BIRDS BY - Deserted In Urban

[ink-the-artist]

Grocery shopping

[telumendils]

What do you think you're trying to understand about your story?

Dimension 20: Neverafter — Episode 9, “Origins”

[telumendils]

#the allegory to Black boyhood Lou brought to this character is simply unmatched by any other adaptation of pinocchio. it's That Good.

[succubusboyfriend]

if you’re offline or away and i message you something (like a link to a meme or a picture or w/e) honestly just assume that i’m just leaving it there for when you get back and not expecting you to answer straight away. i don’t need you to respond with “hey, sorry, i wasn’t at the computer!” or anything. i was leaving u a gift for later.

[slightmayhem]

This also applies if you’re online and just don’t want to or have the energy to deal with humans in the moment. Just because we have the ability to reply in real time does not mean we have the obligation.

[melon-official]

im like a cat i drag the posts to ur doorstep and if ur not there it’s ok, the post will be on ur porch for later

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[chilewithcarnage]

[ten-and-donna]

the utter ecstasy of “is that lavENDER?” is what sells it for me

[pulling-aggro]

a level of appreciation for charcuterie the likes of which has never been seen before

[alwaysscreechingbasement]

[teashoesandhair]

This doesn’t include the best bit of the whole thing - she found the Twitter thread!

[black-feather-fiction]

This is like one of those romance novels where people bond over accidentally writing each other emails but better.

Like Pride and Prejudice but instead of the love interest getting dissed for his toxicity and then reforming, it’s just two people bonding over dissing a dead toxic asshole.

10/10 would recommend

[so1987-deactivated20230102]

who’s gonna tell tumblr that executive dysfunction is more than Not Doing Things?

[so1987-deactivated20230102]

okay

these are the executive functions. impairment of these functions is executive dysfunction

[dailypattondoodles]

Oh.

OH

[lurlur]

Girl, help. None of my executives are functioning

[infestuous]

Wally Dion, Green Star Quilt, 2019 circuit boards, brass wire, copper tube

[chekhovs-raygun]

I SAW THIS IN THE PORTLAND ART MUSEUM! ITS HUGE!

it shimmers like no gemstones i've ever seen: green as malachite and emerald but shot through with opal, gold, copper. photographs can't do it justice because of how it shines, as well as the way the actual material elements have their own dimensions. you can lean in and study all the fine lines of the circuits or step back and admire how the rearranged whole forms new patterns. it's one of the most beautiful creations i've ever seen.

[ahotknife]

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

[clearestbluest]

<3

[shining-bewear]

[fruiitlins]

hey!