HOW TO GLAZE YOUR WORK WITHOUT A GOOD PC(or on mobile)/TIPS TO MAKE IT LESS VISIBLE
Glaze your work online on:
Cara app. It requires you to sign up but it is actually a good place for your portfolio. Glazing takes 3 minutes per image and doesn't require anything but an internet connection compared to 20-30 minutes if your pc doesn't have a good graphic card. There IS a daily limit of 9 pictures tho. Glazed art will be sent to you after it's done, by email. It took me 30 minutes to glaze 9 images on a default setting. Cara app is also a space SPECIFICALLY for human artists and the team does everything in their power to ensure it stays that way.
WebGlaze. This one is a little bit more complicated, as you will need to get approval from the Glaze team themselves, to ensure you're not another AI tech bro(which, go fuck yourself if you are). You can do it through their twitter, through the same Cara app(the easiest way) or send them an email(takes the longest). For more details read on their website.
Unfortunately there are no ways that I know of to use Nightshade YET, as it's quite new. Cara.app definitely works on implementing it into their posting system tho!
Now for the tips to make it less visible(the examples contain only nightshade's rendering, sorry for that!):
Heavy textures. My biggest tip by far. Noise, textured brushes or just an overlay layer, everything works well. Preferably, choose the ones that are "crispy" and aren't blurred. It won't really help to hide rough edges of glaze/nightshade if you blur it. You can use more traditional textures too, like watercolor, canvas, paper etc. Play with it.
Colour variety. Some brushes and settings allow you to change the colour you use just slightly with every stroke you make(colour jitter I believe?). If you dislike the process of it while drawing, you can clip a new layer to your colour art and just add it on top. Saves from the "rainbow-y" texture that glaze/nightshade overlays.
Gradients(in combination with textures work very well). Glaze/nightshade is more visible on low contrast/very light/very dark artworks. Try implementing a simple routine of adding more contrast to your art, even to the doodles. Just adding a neutral-coloured bg with a darker textured gradient already is going to look better than just plain, sterile digital colour.
And finally, if you dislike how glaze did the job, just try to glaze/shade it again. Sometimes it's more visible, sometimes it's more subtle, it's just luck. Try again, compare, and choose the one you like the most. REMEMBER TO GLAZE/SHADE AFTER YOU MADE ALL THE CHANGES, NOT BEFORE!!
If you have any more info feel free to add to this post!!
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cat dad au fic! in which kitten comforts scar. few things you need to know for context - "the isaacs" is a silly name scar gave to the heroes who would bully him, kitten uses a bunch of neos, of which i'm using xit/xitself in this fic, and for a few years when scar first found kitten he was under a lot of stress with work and they both had a bad time. that is all
"I like this one."
Scar hums as Kitten hands him another picture. In this one, the two of them are dressed up as Hotguy, both laughing as a tiny Kitten points a fake arrow at his chest. Touching his finger to the cascading reds and oranges, he inhales the smell of memories and watches the echoes flash by.
"I have captured you, Hotguy! Give up if you know what's good for you!"
"No! Never! You won't catch the tail end of my whiskers, Catguy!"
"Not if I use my special bow! You're dead, Hotguy! I will capture you and I'll—"
As joy rings out in the silent air of reminiscence, a smile warmed with time spreads on his face.
"Yeah. I like this one, too."
Carefully setting the photograph aside, Scar moves on to the next one. With Ari out this afternoon, he and Kitten spontaneously decided to clear out some old boxes—and the nostalgia is hitting like nothing else.
Surrounded by various papers and bundles and scraps, they sit side by side on the floor of his room and exchange quiet comments as they pass around mementos of years past. The atmosphere is peaceful, hushed, and looking from the tiny kitten on the photographs to the grown up cat next to him, Scar can't help but marvel at how long it's been.
He never thought he'd get here.
Stifling a laugh into his palm over the picture of small Kitten with a rubber fish and a beard of foam, Scar adds it to the growing collection. Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, he looks over at Kitten—
And his heart skips a beat.
Centred in Kitten's padded hands is an assortment of crumpled papers, familiar as anything Scar wouldn't like to recall. Delicately smoothed out and held together with years old tape, the grid pattern has faded away, but he doesn't need to see the scribbles to immediately recognise them and everything that came with.
Art of Kitten that xit was never meant to see jumping at him from the frayed scraps, Scar asks, "Are those...?"
"Hm?" Kitten makes a noise that's more cat than anything. "Oh, these? Yeah, you—you drew them for me, didn't you? I remember I kept finding them in your bag."
"Yeah, I remember you kept going through my things like a nosy feline," Scar jokingly gripes. His grin thins at the edges, "I—I do remember these, yeah."
Drawing on patrols, sketch after sketch to block out the mocking, the insults—getting the drawings ripped from him and torn into tiny pieces right in front of his eyes. Sinking to his knees and cradling the pieces in his hands, tears littering the floor.
He kept them as a reminder of his failures. He never thought they would ever become anything more.
"Why were they torn?" Kitten asks after a while of Scar silently staring at his lap. "Did you not like them?"
Scar doesn't reply. Kitten knows about the mistreatment his old team would put him through, but somehow it still feels shameful, even after all these years, to acknowledge that it happened. That he let it happen, and let it go on for as long as it did because he was too weak to stand up for himself.
Too bad to realise how that weakness was impacting the people around him.
"Scar."
"I did like them," he says suddenly, vehemence splitting from his tongue. "I liked them so much. It's just, I would always draw on missions and I'd get distracted and, well," Scar shrugs, smiling like it's all right past the bitter lump in his throat, "the Isaacs didn't like that."
"Oh."
He doesn't know why it means so much to him. They're only drawings. Stupid doodles of Kitten to chase away the self-loathing that never really left. They're not even good. And yet here he is, decades past and still getting emotional over things that don't matter. It doesn't matter.
He doesn't matter.
"I thought you were the one who tore them," Kitten blurts out. "I thought you didn't like them, and that's why you tore them. I," he breaks off, his tail curls around his legs.
"Back when I was a kid, I thought it was because you didn't like me."
Guilt grips Scar's chest. All those years ago, when Kitten would curl up in front of a closed door—the drawings were an attempt at something good. To show him how much he appreciated him when words wouldn't come. And he ruined that, and now he's ruined what was meant to be a simple cozy afternoon.
He ruins everything, he's always known. Somehow it still hurts.
.
.
.
.
.
Kitten is worried about Scar.
Has been for a while now, and the torn drawings are only the start of it.
The few years during which little bits of tape would stick to his claws were hard on them both, and even years later xit can't stop the cold dark grey of abandonment from creeping up when xit thinks of that awful time. Staying up late waiting for Scar to come home, only to fall asleep and wake the next day to an empty flat—it was soul-sucking.
But he healed. He's not there anymore. Lately, he's not so sure about Scar.
A good few minutes pass before xit decides to speak up.
"It was really hard for you back then, wasn't it?"
Focus sinking into nowhere, Scar jerks as he breaks out of his daze.
"Huh, what?"
"Those first few years. When it was just you and me. Taking care of a child while working the way you did at the time can't have been easy," Kitten probes. He doesn't expect anything but the deflection he's come to know, and he wishes Scar would be honest with him.
He wishes Scar would be honest with himself.
"Well, I mean—there were some rough patches, yeah," his friend stammers out. "But—"
"You would cry yourself to sleep."
Scar's head shoots up, the dark bags under his eyes never seemed more prominent.
"I heard. Every time."
He looks down, "I'm sorry."
"No, don't apologise," Kitten says quickly. "Just...we keep talking about what it was like for me, yeah? But we never talk about what it was like for you."
Abruptly, Scar gets up and walks over to the bed, sitting down, rocking back and forth as he pulls his sleeves over his fingers.
"It's—it doesn't matter. I'm okay now."
Kitten follows, clambering up next to him and peering past the curtain of brown hair at the face hidden beneath.
"I'm not sure you are."
Scar's expression crumples for a split second.
"Don't worry about me, Kitten," he says. "I'll—it's not your job to look after me."
Kitten scoots closer, xits tail lays itself over his back. Scar doesn't speak and xit doesn't either; words are difficult and xit's content to sit here staring at the old wallpaper, making out dirty kitchens and wine-stained floors in the peeling vinyl. Stillness can hold all the sentences within its grasp, he's learned—he'll never ask for more than what the quiet can give him.
Outside, damning clouds begin to gather as a shuddering inhale stumbles its way out of Scar's lungs.
"Sometimes it felt like it was all for nothing."
The confession breaks the silence, but does not break the gentle swishing motions of Kitten's tail against his spine.
"It was just—so difficult," he continues, letters spilling out of his mouth like an avalanche of wretched revelations. "Nothing was working. I spread myself thin every day and I still just constantly felt like I was doing it for nothing. And I'm—I'm sorry."
Scar's hands thrust upwards, he trips over another inhale.
"I tried so hard to do what was best for you and I just ended up hurting you—every time. And I just," he bends his head, swipes at his eyes, "maybe I'm not meant to be good. Maybe it would be better if I just...wasn't."
His features twist, eyebrows inching higher on his forehead; he looks devastated, wrought with grief for what could have been, what he should have been and everything he never was. Decades of regret play in the creases of his skin as he tugs on his hair, blinking rapidly in the way he always does—the way that always fails.
Kitten was never one for words, but in this moment he thinks that maybe what he struggles to give is what Scar needs. He needs to exist, and touch not meant to hurt can only do so much.
Stillness can hold all the sentences within its grasp, but phantom promises won't stitch up an age-old wound.
"Scar, you did—so much for me," xit says, and Scar's back jumps in a tremor. "For so many people. I wouldn't be here if you weren't."
Eyes squeezed shut, the other emits a low noise, "I hurt you."
"You talked to me and gave me drawings and found me a therapist. You did more to help than anyone else ever could."
Scar shakes his head, shakes it like Kitten's words are incomprehensible, impossible to believe, and maybe they are. Leaning forward, trembling hands lifting to press to his chin, he curls in on himself, shoulders hunching like a plea—a plea for Kitten to stop saying things that he can't, won't let himself believe are real.
Kitten does not relent.
"Look, I know you have this fear in you that you'll hurt anyone you rely on but that's not true. You deserve support, that's what we're here for."
"No, I—these are my own struggles, and I—I can deal with it—"
Scar's voice bounces up like marbles off the wooden floor; the tears he's desperately wiping off his cheeks render his assurances anything but genuine. Clouds descending in the streams of his despair, he's never looked more damaged.
"You took care of me for so long," Kitten says softly, reaching out for a man who won't let himself accept that love never had to be earned. "Let yourself be taken care of, too."
As his friend continues to shake his head in denial, he thinks of a rainy evening, a door left ajar, a room filled with muffled sobs—and he thinks of two friends, both hurt by the world, both having found healing within each other.
"I like your ears. Remember?"
Scar slumps, defeated. Loud, uncontrollable weeping tears through him like a wildfire and Kitten pulls him close, rubbing a clawed hand over his back, muttering, "Relax. You don't have to be strong all the time."
Raking his claws over quivering vertebrae, listening to choked cries get suppressed against his rumbling chest, he leans back against the blankets and pulls Scar with him, carding thin fingers through long brown strands as his friend settles, trembling, atop his body. Scar's hands are freezing cold, the wire under his feet looms ever farther down below—
And Kitten knows in this moment that all that he needs is for someone to make sense of him. And xit knows that, finally, xit understands.
And when Scar drapes himself over xit in an instinctual, unguarded yearning to be near, xit drops xits head into the crook of his neck and doesn't look up and begs that this moment would never end. Kitten's heart may not shine, but he would give all the gold in his possession to mend the cracks of Scar's tainted soul.
And as he drifts to a doze with his friend in his arms, he thinks back to the torn drawings—taped together, hidden away as something to be treasured. And xit thinks, maybe broken doesn't have to be forever.
Under Kitten's hold, for the first time in years, Scar starts to believe that maybe everything he did wasn't for nothing.
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