FREQUENTLY ASKED

  • is this a sideblog?

Yes, so I follow people/like stuff from allonsyblue

  • what program do you use?

Photoshop CS5

  • what brushes/brush settings do you use?

If you work intensively in Photoshop I highly recommend buying Frenden’s custom Photoshop brushes! There are brushes for Manga Studio also available but I don’t use that program so I can’t vouch for them haha.

There’s one called “Oil Medium to Large Tip” and I think it’s a default photoshop brush? It might be under the “calligraphic brushes” preset or something but I know I didn’t download it from anywhere. It’s one of my favorites.

Also STUMPY PENCIL is probably the best pencil brush I have ever tried

Basic brush tips: For the default hard round brush, to keep it crisp and not all gross and blurry, check the texture box

It won’t be as smooth as Paint Tool SAI’s lines or anything but that’s sort of on its own level… I’m just too used to Photoshop I can’t switch over at all

  • what size canvas do you draw at?

11x17in at 300dpi (3300x5100 px) if I remember to draw it at print size but I get distracted a lot and crop and resize without thinking so I don’t know, usually like 2000px across. Don’t be like me it causes so many regrets

  • do you use a tablet?

Right now I’m using a Wacom Intuos4 Medium and it’s my baby. Keep in mind the medium size is actually quite large (tablet itself is 10x14in, drawing surface is 6x9in)

I used to use a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet refurbished from Amazon, about $50 and portable so it’s a fairly cheap, decent option

  • what kind of sketchbooks/pencils/pens do you use?

Any sketchbook that’s cheap or buy one get one free lol

Canson is a good brand. Moleskine sketchbooks have suuuper sturdy/thick/smooth paper but they are expensive and scary and I don’t sketch Works of Art so I don’t really go for them….

My favorite brand ever is Kunst & Papier, I love how they’re bound, they lay flat nicer than moleskines and the paper is way less intimidating. The only stores I’ve seen carry them are Art Center student store & Blue Rooster in LA (by Vermont & Hollywood) or online I guess

I have a million pencils and pens of all kinds piling up around the house of varying qualities so I just use whatever, I am not a very consistent person

Zebra brush pens are sooo great

And this one from Tokyo Lifestyle makes a good range of line widths but I can’t read it

  • how can I buy your art?

At conventions if I have an artist table but they are all on the west coast and mostly in the LA area, the one exception being Fanime because that’s a really good con

Sorry there’s almost no chance of me attending any other cons out of state in the near future!! It’s hard enough to handle even local cons as it is

You can buy prints and a couple of other products online at my Society6 store (if you’d like me to put up specific prints contact me and I’ll let you know if I can make that happen) (because I draw things too small sometimes I have so many regrets)

Online button sales are at my Goodsie store. It’s closed temporarily until probably June so I can focus on drawing con prep stuff until my hand falls off.

  • any advice on how to draw? (general/specific/tutorial)

Just, you know. Draw a lot, draw from life, draw things you like, draw all the time, challenge yourself. Ask someone who… knows what they’re doing… hahahha

I don’t know how to teach things but if you ask about something specific I’ll do my best I guess

art is hard

  • how do i get clean scans?
with photoshop magic
  • how do i change the color of my lineart?
more photoshop magic
  • are you in art school?

I go to Art Center for Illustration

  • do you do requests / you should draw __ / you need to draw __ / more of __

Thanks May for this informative graphic

Honestly strangers telling me what to draw is one of my biggest pet peeves and no matter how well-intentioned you are or how nicely you ask I will probably just get irritated and ignore it

just so

you know

  • do you do commissions?

Not right now, sorry

  • how long have you been drawing?

Since I was a little babby

  • how can I get a list of tags like yours?

Here is how I do it with my theme, all of them are just manually written out. On some themes you may have to put the links in the “description” box instead. You can get them on a separate page by going to your Customize Blog thing and scrolling down to Pages → +Add a page

  • how do you meet all these celebrities?!

Long stories short I live right in the middle of LA and it sort of happens

  • what is Good Omens?

I get asked this a lot so here it is

Good Omens is a novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett about the apocalypse. It’s really funny and I am weirdly obsessed with it

There’s also supposed to be a miniseries happening sometime in the near future but the last bit of solid news we got was in early 2011 so it’s….. yup

  • where can I watch BBC Sherlock / Doctor Who / Supernatural?

Sherlock! Doctor Who! Supernatural! All three are on Netflix Instant now too, I believe

  • why is anon off?
I prefer to answer most asks privately. It drives me absolutely nuts to have a lot of text/asks on my artblog to the point where I compulsively delete older questions. If you can’t ask off anon then I probably don’t want to answer it
  • why didn’t you answer my question??

I wrote out some things about unanswered questions here

I just…. get a lot of messages

If you wrote me a really nice message, a lot of the time I like to keep them to myself and if I answer it then it will disappear!!!!! Sorry if it seems like I’m ignoring you, sometimes I’ll try to respond but stringing together words is actually so hard for me it ends up being a huge timesink lol…

Also if you asked an actual question sometimes I’m like “hmm i will answer this later i guess” and then i forget to answer it forever

Also is it just me or is it really stupid hard to see notifications of new messages or to ANSWER THEM on mobile tumblr