Do You Even Tan, Bro??

The most important part of running an ask blog is to do it because you want to, not because you think it’ll make you popular or internet famous. Make sure you genuinely enjoy the character you’re drawing and developing and don’t be afraid to break the mold your character popped out of. For instance, my interpretation of Princess Peach is a chubby Asexual princess with bipolar disorder--quite different from the petite, blonde beauty Nintendo created her as

Plus don’t be afraid to make your own character from scratch and introduce it to a community. There’s a big community on tumblr called Nintendask that’s loaded with Nintendo-themed characters, from Zelda, to Pikmin, to Kirby, and Mario-verse characters. I have another character blog over at @askmonita because since Monita is pretty much my own original character I feel like I have more freedom to play around with her!

There might be a few people who don;t like your character and what you put out and aren’t shy about showing it, but if you ever get a negative message or a message that makes you uncomfortable, the best thing to do is just delete the message! Don’t even answer it or post about it, don’t fuel it or try to fight it, just delete the message and move on with your life. 

And don’t be an asshole.

I’ve come across a few people that were incredibly pushy and aggressive toward me and a few people I know and that’s never fun, so just act natural, interact with a few people, send them asks or IMs and talk to them like you would try to befriend a new person. Don’t push someone if they don’t seem interested in befriending you because 8/10 times it usually ends badly, so be nice!

That’s pretty much all you need to know about starting an ask blog

As for maintaining the blog and keeping it active, I’m a very poor person to ask about that. My inbox is open 24/7 and I get a handful of asks every few weeks to play around with. Sometimes I’ll even send myself anons just to get the ball rolling a little, or I’ll talk about Daisy and my other characters to my friends and they’ll send me things too. But this usually just goes back to what I said before, don’t make a blog because you want to be popular, do it because it’ll be fun for you. 

And to answer your question about drawing skills and creating your own style, that’s a super challenging thing to do!! The best thing I can tell you is just start drawing! Imitate other peoples styles (not copy, imitate, yes there is a difference that I’ll show you in a second) Try out different drawing styles and different body types, use programs and brush sets and mediums you’re not used to--art is all about putting yourself out there and learning as you go.

To improve you just need to keep drawing until you get better or learn to tweak little things to better your style. If you look at my very first ask blog I ever made, you can see a perfect example of art improvement 

Below is my character Cloud whose blog has blipped out of existence a long time ago

This is an icon I drew of him in 2015

This is a pagedoll I did of him in 2016

Same character, same drawing program, same amount of time and effort put into the pieces.

A year of drawing and playing around with styles made all the difference, I learned how to draw faster, make things look more balanced and visually appealing, I also took tips and style imitations from a few of my friends and some artists I admire. Don’t be afraid to be inspired by people.

Now another method of learning I enjoy is style imitation. I love trying to mimic other people’s styles and put my own twists on them. There’s an artist I’ve followed for a very long time, @mayakern (she has a really good webcomic called MonsterPop btw, you should totally check it out) she’s influenced my art style in several ways, one of the most apparent ways is how I draw body variation and noses

Take this:

This is one of Maya’s promotional sketches from her webcomic’s Volume 2 kickstarter

And compare it to:

My New Years drawing of Daisy, Peach, and Waluigi

You can see that they’re similar in how I’ve drawn faces and noses, but they’re also clearly different and one is not a copy of the other.

Inspiration is nothing to be ashamed of, just don’t flat out copy someone’s style and claim it for your own.

Side note: improvement can also come in many different ways, I used to draw “finished” art like this

but now my “finished” art looks more like this:

There’s benefits and drawbacks to each improvement, for instance it’s very hard for me to draw men like I used to, but I’ve gotten much better at shading, drawing hands, legs, and proportioning bodies

tl;dr:

Ask blogs can be super fun!!! The first step into the ask-blog community is to just make one and see where it takes you!! I’ve made a lot of really nice friends since I joined tumblr about 3 years ago who have stuck with me through good times and bad, so just have fun with it!!

Side note, here’s another helpful post I recommend giving a quick skim reading: