Sparrow could never really let go of being a living weapon, even after Theresa took the Spire, so they just kind of kept to the hard life of Herodom. After losing their first family to Lucien they didn't plan on having another, but eventually Logan and Rose just sort of happened; it was before Rose's birth that Theresa decided to show Sparrow the future, and even knowing they were damning their children to the same fate they had to endure, Sparrow just... accepted that.
They died around 44 and spent their final years consolidating the newly-united Albion. No one ever found out who the kids' other parent was and Albion never had any monarchs-consort; but the first members of the royal council and those closest to the king were Reaver and Sir Walter Beck, and Sparrow picked them to serve as Logan's regents when he was crowned after their death, at 14.
1st of all: amazing ST art, absolutely stunning but more importantly- are you using Krita or just smth that has a similar interface?! (Because if it's the former..any advice for a poor novice?) 😭
heya thank you so much!!! yep it's krita
Not sure what to tell you, i've been using it for a few years but i don't really feel like i got much advice. I think the biggest issues for newcomers is it has a lot of features and looks a little intimidating, but you just gotta stick with it until you get comfortable. But here's some stuff i do and hopefully it's gonna be useful
Use most (if not all) brushes at a decreased opacity so that they're softer, otherwise by default they're super hard and pixellated and look weird (and sure you can modify that in settings but maybe you need the hard version and don't wanna have 10 duplicates of the same brush. changing the opacity is a quicker fix)
You can make custom brushes or (i'm pretty sure it's still a thing?) download new ones from online, but personally i found it's not necessary. It has a lot of brushes and they're pretty versatile, it's just a matter of knowing what to do with them, but that's up to you.
My absolute favorites are the Basic-4, Pencil 2b (BEST most natural-looking pencil), Pencil-5 Tilted, Marker Chisel Smooth, Marker Details, Marker Dry (THE goat, a lot of my paintings are exclusively done with this), Bristles-2 Flat Rough, WaterC Flats (both Big-Grain Tilt and Decay Tilt), and WaterC Spread WideArea. Like obviously you're gonna have to figure out what works best for you, but these are really great brushes
If you want to color glaze over a grayscale layer, don't always do layers with the "color" setting. Depending on the values you're gonna need soft light, overlay or even color dodge, and sometimes you're gonna need to stack them. It's a bit trial and error-y
Also if you want to change the color of something, i'd rather go with "slope, offset, power" (under filters->adjust) than "hsv adjustment". hsv makes it kinda muddy
And speaking of filters! "Color balance" is the GOAT, not kidding it's your best friend. Great for when you have a sketch that feels a little lifeless, but you don't want to go and fully color it. If you have a dark, a base and a highlight, you can adjust them in color balance to make them pop, and it brings out the texture in your brushes too
Color adjustment curves is another great one, just use in moderation
Sometimes I'll take my piece (all layers merged into one beforehand, if you use more than one. i draw on a single layer usually), duplicate it, and apply some filters to the duplicate and change its settings to overlay or something else (again, trial and error). Great for making colors more vivid, shadows deeper, etc
Dddo not. use the move/resize tool on small sections or sections that the eye will be drawn to. It ruins the quality, makes everything blurry. Unfortunately there's no alternative so if you *must* move something, be ready to redraw it. And similarly the gradient tool can make the transition between colors really choppy depending on your canvas settings, so you gotta manually smooth that out. Thankfully the program has a lot of brushes that are great for a soft seamless blend
BUT if you tap the screen with your finger instead of the stylus while you have the transform tool selected, it'll actually bring up a menu with more options, like perspective and stuff, which is very useful and very not straightforward
But perhaps most importantly, bc this almost caused me to have to get a new tablet (i'm bad with tech okay): fully delete the program's data in your app settings every few months. It stores a buttload of useless stuff and clogs up all your memory. So back up your files, put em in your google drive or something, and then give krita a routine lobotomy
hi hello your phantom doodle killed me and as the ceo of the cowbell ghoul fanclub i am legally obligated to request a cowbell doodle if you happen to have a design for him 👀
i think i've drawn him once before? but it wasn't even really my own design
so i whipped something up real quick!! tried to go halfway between cow (bc obviously) and goat (bc demon and bc i see the old ghouls mostly as goat-like. and because he was kind of a sinister lanky fellow!!)
shoutout to middle-to-highschool me who was only beginning to dip his toes into Interests and Subcultures and wore red around his eyes nearly everyday, not knowing why, just bc all the cool emos online were doing it
okay im so very sorry for sending two of these but i just remembered ghost exists and. could you try a leetle aether for me? for scientific purposes (no pressure tho)
after soft launching it (by just releasing it no name no face straight to ao3) i’m uh. cough cough. bringing this to the attention of my wider audience
there’s only two chapters out as of now but consider having a look!
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