beccacc asked: Hi Mary Kate, I've been delving heavily in the land of hand lettering lately and I always bring my hand drawn work into PS and color from there because I always thought live trace wouldn't work in the ways you use it. I dont want to try to steal your tricks of the trade but I was curious if you would be willing to share some of the ways you tweak the settings for live trace to make them work for you because as you've said in previous asks, auto settings stink! Your work is always an inspiration.

Hi there! I know some people that go straight to PS and never work with illustrator either. But I like to move things around and make little edits and it’s much easier to do that in illustrator. 

So I scan in my nice little drawing at around 600-1000 dpi, bring it into illustrator and if you go to live trace, there is a drop down menu and at the bottom you’ll see tracing settings. I basically choose 0px for the three settings on the right or choose 1px for path fitting. You can fiddle with the threshold a bit too but you wouldn’t want to stray to far from 125 or whatever the default is.

The key is to have a nice black drawing scanned in at 600 dpi, and not drawn too much smaller than how it will be produced to avoid the live trace-y look but keep the nice hand drawn edge. Hope this is helpful!

Anonymous asked: Hi Mary Kate! I'm a big fan of your work! Just wondering what medium you actually use for your artworks? And what sort of media are you most proficient with? Many thanks!

Thank you. I do all my drawing in pen then scan them in and add color and texture in photoshop. I’m most comfortable with pens rather than brushes but every once in a while I like to venture out with different tools. I’m least proficient with using the computer, which is why I hand draw everything.

Anonymous asked: Hello Mary Kate :) Where do you usually get the textures you use? Do you make your own? I'm not sure if I'm using textures properly or if the ones I have just suck lol. But yeah they never come out as nice.

Hi! I scan some textures in and use brushes in photoshop. I think starting with hand drawn textures is a great way of understanding what kind of texture you want and learning how it’s achieved so when you make textures in photoshop, you create more believable textures. Brayers, paint brushes, ink, crumpled paper are all good tools to start with. It also never hurts to take a break from the computer.

Anonymous asked: Hi! You put a picture of a blue tote on your instagram with the getting stuff done line the other day and I really want it. Will it be for sale? Thanks! Susana

It is! Here’s the link to the tote. https://www.etsy.com/listing/115045990/feels-good-to-get-some-stuff-done-tote