Hello, after almost an entire year of "attempting" to learn furry art I am here to catalog my journey.

The Beginning

To give some background, before I decided to make furry art I was already making marseys and sometimes even edited AI art, so I was somewhat familiar with manipulating images (and using lots of clipart for my marseys lol).

and

https://rdrama.net/post/37872/carpathianflorists-offical-fursona-as-commissioned-by

BUT eleven months ago I had the idea to start learning how to make art for real, (completely ironically of course haha)

back then I was still using Paint.net, which is what I had been using for all my marseys before then. Looking back it was really limited with what you could do on it, so I'm glad I switched thanks to @Sylveon advice.

Looking back my first piece does look really shitty, however, I was proud that I was able to pump out something that somewhat looked like an actual furry.

Addressing Something Real Quick

Before we move on I want to address something that a lot of people ask me , and that I why I use mouse and keyboard and not a drawpad. Well, I don't use a drawpad for two different reasons.

1. I am a stubborn bastard who wants to prove people wrong that I CAN make decent art with mouse and keyboard.

2. I have a condition where I can't really hold my hands that steady. I doesn't really have that big of an effect on my life, you can only really notice it with my handwriting, however having to accurately draw straight lines would take forever if I used a drawpad, so that is why I use mouse and keyboard like a true neurodivergent.

Also as a bonus, it gives me a artstyle that can't easily be replicated by our looming AI overlords that are coming to kill us all

The Evolution of My Art (Haram)

Over time I have become a lot better at making my character look less flat and more lively. I think one of the best examples to show it is my furry OC Ratso. I've been making a habit of drawing her every few months just to see how much I have improved, so here is a lazy infographic showcasing it!

I've gotten a lot better at making the art pop out, and how to make jaws actually work. The jaws are what make furry characters stand out from regular boring human art, so I am glad that I am getting the hang of doing it.

One other thing that I am proud of is how much better my shading has gotten. It looks like night and day the difference between my new shading and old shading, and all I had to do was an experiment with different cowtools.

Old

VS New

It looks a lot softer on the eyes and I like it!

Also, I drew my fursona, I hope to make a more updated one at some point however this was the one I drew to get the lolcow badge.

The Reception to My Art

So after I had a few months of practice under my belt I decided to make a furaffinity account. This was all very new to me because tbh I have never actually interacted with the wider furry community before, once you are no longer the weirdest and most degenerate person in a room it's not very fun anymore. However despite that, I am an attention-craving whore so I decided "frick it, might as well start putting my art out there".

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/altaccountokapi

As of right now, I have 23 favorites and 363 profile views. Surprisingly I have not had many thirst posts put under my art so far, only like 3 "I wish I was her" type comments.

Generally speaking, my cbt and chastity porn would do the best, while the less "kinky" ones would not do as well, which is fine since I prefer to do kinky artwork anyways.

You would never guess what my most popular post was, it honestly shock me how well it did, it was this one lol.

I guess boxing fetishes are a surprisingly big thing lmao. The more you know I guess.

Final Thoughts and The Future

I'm very happy with the progress I was able to make in only a year. Please keep in mind that while other furry may live in their mom's basement and can spend 12 hours a day making art, I have both college and a job to worry about, so I don't have as much free time to work on art as most other furry artist.

I have been working 50+ hours these past few weeks just to afford tuition for next semester, so I haven't really had time to work on art. However, I do have a work in progress right now. It's going to feature the character from THIS piece, who will be futa. And I'm warning you now that this piece will be HIGHLY degenerate.

(The WIP)

Anyways I would like to thank the rdrama jannies ( @carpathianflorist , @Aevann, etc) for tolerating me, I want to thank @Sylveon for recommending krita and unleashing this monster unto the world. I want to thank @MarcoHoHo for being the biggest fan of my art, and finally, I want to thank all the cool dramafur of rdrama who keep this degenerate community here alive.

See you all in 2023!