It's Truuuue

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tyuran answered your question: Are there any beloved stories/series you’ve read/watched that have heavily influenced the feel or content of any of your own ideas?

Definitely Dinotopia... and DEFINITELY everything Myst. Oh dear god Myst, Riven, URU, even the novels (tho I wasn't impressed with the... quality of writing... just the world itself is so so so so so so so wonderful). I replay all the games every few years because they are just so much everything I love. EVERYTHING. I loved it when I learned the D'ni civilization was in a cave in New Mexico, I love all the damn soundtracks, I love that the ten thousand year political history of the entire civilization is plotted out, I love the beautiful language, the base5 number system (which I will admit I did NOT solve in Riven on my own), and of course all the wonderful wonderful art that has gone into creating the cultures and the Ages. Nfffhfhfhhfhahajdfhkas. MYST.

Breakin in a new sketchbook.

HOW DO YOU ART SO GOOD?! Also why you no been on for like a year?

I was on the fence about answering this XD; BUT I got a bunch of new followers recently (HI THERE) so I figure I will give it a shot. tl;dr guys.

That’s.. kinda related to the second question. It’s hard for me to articulate why I am such a freaking hermit. It’s not shyness… a lot of it is sensitivity because my relationship with art is SO personal. People can dislike me IRL all day long and it’s not even an issue cos FFF they dont KNOW me. But if they don’t like my art its like OMG I’m giving you a peek into my BRAIN, that IS me, it just got personal, time to throw down. When I say I peaked early, I was a fairly active artist on the internets when I was a teenager and got a LOT of attention I wasn’t able to handle well. The pervasive attitude that artists are sort of visual candy dispensers with a duty to share everything they do makes me reeeeaaally uncomfortable. I don’t draw for attention. I draw because I have stuff in my head that has to come out, and because creating makes me whole (I say creating instead of drawing here because I also love to make stuff, dance, sing, play music, I wanna do EVERYTHING).

I feel weird saying “I don’t draw for attention” because there’s a sort of implied diss that I don’t want to be there. Attention is actually really valuable! Motivational encouragement, constructive criticism, etc, all great stuff. I have made a lot of amazing friends through sharing art, and I totally love talking about it all the damn time, it’s often the medium that gets in the way with me. I like realtime chats best. I’m gonna sound like a cranky old lady now but it took me way too long to figure out tumblr and I miss IRC >:( And in my crankly old lady old age I just don’t have anything to prove to anyone and fucks are no longer given. I draw what I want, when I want, and share when I feel like it. SORRY NOT SORRY.

I’ll be honest, it’s only because once in a while someone tells me that they are really inspired by my art that I make the effort to share. But I forget often, and the fact that I can go thru really long periods without drawing much at all… well. Gushy fangirling is about the only thing that will bust down that wall these days. I used to feel guilty about this but it’s just how I am.

I’m a lot happier answering more specific asks about art tho XD Composition? Design? Style? CLOTHES? Lighting/Materials? Color theory? COLORSILOVECOLOR? Gimme.

grabendolch said: Hey there, what’s that second tool panel just next to your taskbar? it looks like it’s from some art program but not a part of SAI

It's called Paint Dock, it's for slate PCs (samsung series 7 & asus eee slate) to make drawing programs actually useable. I have spent... a while... since getting my eee slate trying to basically work as something where I can be a couch potato digital artist :p WHICH REMINDS ME I did intend to properly review the computer. At least a little :p

Downside is that the harddrive is seriously 64GB. I bought a 120GB to replace it with but I'm not quite ready to bust open a $1k machine yet!! I did get a 128GB sd card for it though (yes they totally make those now!) which is enough to cram all my art-related stuff on so I'm good. The other downside is that the drivers are REALLY fussy and it took ages for me to get pressure sensitivity working properly and across different programs. I got it working in SAI and Photoshop, I haven't got it to work with Inkscape though I don't want to mess with it anymore. A few times I lost pressure sensitivity at the drop of a hat and the last time I spent FOUR HOURS uninstalling and reinstalling drivers to get it working again UGH. I was able to carefully write down all the steps I took this time so hopefully that will do the trick. The pressure curve utility makes it good enough for painting, it only has 250 levels of sensitivity compared to 2000+ on the intuous tablets but so far it's been good enough for me. My hand gets crampy a little more often due to having to press a bit harder (less sensitive means its harder to get really really light strokes) but I think with tweaking the settings a bit further I can get that a little better too!

The other other downside is that the MSRP is $1000 but for the most part it's only available for $1400, I got super lucky and it was $1k at the microsoft store but it's not anymore last I checked (plus getting it thru them it came with win7 ultimate and no bloatware!). It's definitely worth it at that price... at the higher price ehhhh, I'D still have bought it but that is what being a couch potato digital artist is worth to me XD becase it's basically a laptop w/o a keyboard it is a TRUE digital sketchbook that is fast enough to run photoshop! So yeah. it's awesome.

What are the naming conventions?

Assuming I have them, lol! Honestly I pull names out of my butt. Sometimes I'll put in a little more effort depending on the story (I have one where I made sure at least most of the characters have names that are marginally clever puns) but for the most part I just go with whatever I think of that feels right at the time... D:

I love Steam Powered Giraffe SO MUCH omg. I heard of em a little over a year ago, and it totally freaked me out since I have a story about musical steampunk robots and here is a band doing that as a THING. WHAT. I avoided them forever cos I was worried I wouldn't like their music... I've had my heart broken too many times by theme bands that look interesting but have crappy music and if that were the case with these guys I would have taken that PERSONALLY. Because STEAMPUNK ROBOTS. Thank goodness it ain't the case here. Mind you most of their older stuff is too damn folksy for my tastes but it grew on me and I love it too now. I just prefer music I can groove or rock out to. MKIII tho? AAAGH. They promised something for everyone and totally delivered, I don't mind listening to it all the way through at all. They're pretty shamelessly nostalgic and I love it, Rollerskate King totally triggered that with me. When I was little my favorite radio station would play disco on saturday nights and my mom and I would dance around the house (she'd teach me all the moves she knew from her disco partying days) driving dad crazy cos he hates disco. :D If I HAD to nitpick it would be with the use of synth horns because I used to play saxophone and trumpet, and synth horns hurt my feelings. Not a fan of synth strings either tho those can sometimes sound good... enough. Next time I hope they find a friend who can play or bribe a music student with pizza to record the real thing or SOMETHING cos weh! Otherwise perfect album is seriously perfect. All of my favorite songs turned out to be Hatchworth's, ohmygod I can't even listen to Go Spine Go without losing my shit it's so ridiculous XD I'll love Sam forever for getting David to sing in a torchy jazz style even if it was just a little bit cos rooowwwwrrrrr. Hatchworth's pretty much the reason I'm such a stan now when I wasn't a year ago. I live a Sam Luke appreciation life :p Bleak Horizon just makes me ache for a Steam Powered Giraffe: The Musical *flail* UGH I want to see them live uuuugh ugh feels etc

Messin with some rainbow hair and rainbow tinsel. Four different sets of ombre brading hair found from trolling ebay which is my ultimate pastime :p these are actually experiments v2 and v3 Imma keep going until I find a blend I am happy with

indigogrim replied to your post: Stuff like this is pretty livejournal ...

The more you practice performing and sharing your art with people the easier it gets.

Thiiiiissss is what I'm talkinbout tho? One would assume 10+ years of trying would be enough to tell if such a thing is gonna work out or not D: I'm reeeaally reaching right now trying to decide if it ever got any easier during that decade of effort and fffffnnnnghmaybe? BUT worth it? That I am even less sure about. Cos when I draw something and I finish I'm good. It's like welp, got a thing out of my head, done, satisfied. Might show a friend or two if they're online at the time. Its a little easier with fanart because fangirling and FEEEELS. But meeeehhh? WHY should I continue to push for it, is what I want to ask. I never got much reason other than because people wanna see? And that's not motivational enough?... sorry...? The inspiration to others thing is but again only sometimes because that's not whyyyyy I do this, so when I struggle to share and can't, then I just feel ashamed and as I said, I'm done with that. 

adrhaze replied to your post: 

You can always become a secret artist with a pseudonym and just keep yourself in the shadows while letting your work speak for you. The masked artist! Or maybe an agent? It works for banksy and a lot of writers.

I have totally considered a pseudonym! At least for writing, if I ever actually finished anything fff. For visual art I don't think Banksy is a good example, being mysterious brings EXTRA attention... (besides doesn't he have an entire crew helping him out...?) Musically I sure love Daft Punk's thing but man how much harder would it be to start doing something like that nowadays? Anonymity is kind of impossible. I'm already probably as secret as I could even be :C

Thing is though, I love musical theater best. Like I LIVE for Cirque du Soleil shows (only time something has ever made me cry just because it was so beautiful), and I did a lot of that stuff when I was a kid. But you really have to put yourself out there for it. Collaborating with a bunch of people to create something thats so many kinds of art all at the same time that no single person could pull off is just the greatest feeling. SO its easier when its a group thing too, a cast and crew can be a really supportive kind of artist family. I made costumes and props and magic tricks, I danced at festivals, I played in band etc. Stopped doing all that stuff publicly when I was 15ish for mostly angsty teenager reasons, though one year I did audition for a musical and that was the last damn time I sang outside of the shower or alone in the car and let me tell you I was ASTRONOMICALLY outside of my comfort zone there, woosh. (but I admit I wasn't satisfied doing ONLY crew cos I gotta daaaaance) After that I would say... a lot of things happened that made life a little bit tougher and I had to lean on my art for emotional support. I don't feel like sharing stupid life story stuff but I mean, maybe some people can at least relate to the idea that you might need oh I dunno, a stable life (one where you don't use up all your energy just trying to survive, for whatever reason. I mean this very broadly cos everyone has struggles) before you can do extra stuff like art. And art is usually in the category of extra stuff. When I had enough spoons left in the day to draw I still wouldn't have enough to deal with the kind of ridiculousness artists online tend to have to deal with. I hope I make sense.

Things are better for me now though which is a big reason this nonsense is on my mind actually.

If you want to paint yourself and your friends weird colors for Halloween season (OR if you’re a nerd who cosplays at every opportunity, or even when there aren’t opportunities because you’re obsessed with makeup like meeeee) I would like to reccomend airbrushing :D

Top photo is my airbrush kit which fits in a toiletry bag from ikea. It includes a mini compressor which you can get for about $40 on amazon.

I use a $20 Badger airbrush from Michaels. I honestly use it more often than my nicer double-action professional airbrush because ngl I get tired of cleaning that thing out. Paint doesn’t actually go through the Badger air gun at all so its easy to clean.

BEST of all, if you also make props or paint fabric for costumes, you can stop spending money on spray paint! Seriously, airbrushes are where it’s at.

THE KEY ITEM is the Badger to Master brand adapter! The most annoying thing about airbrushes is there’s no standard sizing and shapes for ANY brush item or accessory between brands. I got mine in a set from Amazon for about $9. This way you have the choice to use any compressor instead of the expensive air cans.

Anyone who’s tried to do white makeup knows how ANNOYING it is no matter what! Creme makeup has good coverage but it’s gross and gets everywhere no matter how much powder you use to set it! Airbrushing lets you get 100% coverage with water-based liquid body paint. I got the best results with two layers of white and two of Ben Nye final seal (a layer of sealer FIRST helps the color stick and adds a small amount of protective barrier from sweat/oil). The key is to get full coverage with the thinnest possible layers, it flakes off more easily the thicker the paint is applied. Diluting liquid makeup with sealer instead of water or mixing liquid helps too, I don’t have a brand preference and have Ben Nye and Mehron colors, and some more expensive alcohol-based brands for experiments.

Examples! My QT frans (and me, whatever lol) :3 I painted em and they did the rest of makeup and powder. Powder pigments for colors and shading seem to work best before paint is entirely dry, if it gets too dry for blush/shading/etc, I’ve had good results with a light spritz of sealer to make it tacky again. Riles glows in the dark because Mehron has glow body paint so I had to try it, NATURALLY! Also used pure glow pigment as ~gremlin blush~, TKB has it I want to buy it by the pound, lol LOOK AT THAT SPOOKY GLOW THO

OK hope that was informative enough, I’m trying not to make this twenty pages long ok? K.

Oh man so I don't pay much attention to top 40 so it took me forever to discover that I... LOVE... Katy Perry's style. Her and Lady Gaga THERE I SAID IT. It just makes me so happy that they like to be so so weird. Anyways just watched KP's new video and am going nuts over her outfits, found a blog posting of photos from one of the people who worked on the wigs augh omg, omg clothes, etc

...I'm a little mad cos recently I doodled a new character that looks WAY too much like Satyr!Katy but she looks so awesome that augh its hard to stay mad when that sort of thing happens if its awesome so brb I have to go draw 10 pages of clothes in my sketchbook now