Rosaria's Art

[Rosaria Delacroix]

I thought it might be fun to share some odds and ends- I have quite a lot in the backlog, but since this is the cover art to my current novel-in-progress, it felt particularly apt to pop this one up.

Captain Juniper Laurent is plagued with survivor's guilt. Having walked away from the fiery crash of the spaceship The Aurora, he desperately wants to confront the man responsible. Faith shattered, and struggling with the physical and mental aftermath of his life's implosion, Juniper finds himself haunted by the dead and living in equal measure.

That's the working summary for it. I had a lot of fun painting it as a study in color harmony- I normally don't really play around with strong colour or shadow, so it was challenging, but enjoyable. Scribble-scratching in that background texture with my usual plain default brush was super fun too!

[Rosaria Delacroix]

A long time ago, I'd been invited to join a little creative collective that some artists and creative friends of mine had made. It's a pretty friendly, cozy space: you have to have someone personally vouch for you when you're offered an invitation, and it's all very adorably secret club-esque. Really lovely to just chat with some friendly faces, and there are occasional co-working calls if people would like the company while remote.

It turns out that a handful of them had expressed interest in learning about play-by-post tabletop roleplay games, and so, thusly armed with my trusty copy of Butterfly Court, which is still the most fantastic guide to introducing absolute beginners to the medium I've run across, (and very beautifully written/laid out, I've taught two table groups with it who had people who had barely begun creative writing in general, and those who had some writing experience but not much by way of roleplay or collaborative writing, and it was very effective), I've shepherded them into a server for us all to read over the materials, fill out some pre-game forms so we know what content is an enthusiastic yes and what is a vehement no content wise, and left a poll open for them to vote on the genre to our campaign as part of the prep work on their end: mine is to help them make their characters and assess how to best get the plot moving along when we sit down for our first session sometime soon.

So far, it looks like high fantasy with a court intrigue focus, or horror with a dark academia theme might win out the vote, and I'm curious as to which option will win out. I've decided to reuse an old character design I had for a canon character, and breathe some life into him as an original character riffing off of his inspiration: and give him a kid, since I enjoy writing parents and children, and the hilarious antics of kids can bring some much needed levity to balance out the horrors in campaigns. (I have a strict rule at my tables that no harm can come to pets or children, though, so Luciana (nicknamed Lucy, or Lulu) will be fine, even if it winds up being a horror themed campaign.

I drew this in about a hour to get a feel for their designs- that's Lucy's dad, Roman, and I'm thinking maybe I'll go with Bennett as a last name for them? Not sure. But I will certainly be making a cute little blog page on my personal site to chronicle how our campaign rolls out, and to have a spot to collect any art or drabbles I make for it as well- I found a cute theme and have been tinkering away with it sleepily. I think the group'll be stoked when they see it, haha.

[apricior]

Woah your art is amazing!! I love the colors in the cover art of your novel in progress, and the summary is So interesting too!! Roman and Lucy are so cute as well, I'm so relieved that nothing's gonna happen to her even if it's gonna be a horror campaign.

What brushes do you use? Cause I looove the look and texture of your drawings

[Rosaria Delacroix]

Thank you! It ended up being that the high fantasy and court intrigue theme won out by a slim margin- so much more gallivanting around fancy dress parties and whispering assassination orders at night than outright terrors crawling in the walls, haha. I’ve been having fun building up a lore and blog about the whole campaign prep, and we play for the first time soon!

That’s very kind. I am a bit of a minimalist with digital art; the above was made with my typical layout: one layer, a default brush (I like a square brush, but it’s the generic marker one in FireAlpaca, which is the free art program I use) and any texture is hand drawn, rather than being a result of blending modes or particular brushes- I very often color select and paint with about 80-90% color opacity to get the goopy sort of effect and to make colors a bit more coherent.