Hey there! I stumbled upon this entry after you watched me. Hey, thanks for that!


And I could ramble a bit about my experience, maybe that's helpful? This is totally basic and sorry if you're heard this all already hundred of times!

A good start is to share your artwork, even though you may think you're not ready yet. We all started with stick figures, no need to be ashamed. And especially in the beginning you will learn pretty fast and the improvements will probably be visible to everyone and it's so cool to go back to older pieces and know: I can do this better now! Haha.
Plus, seeing where you're at is necessary to give specific tips.

In case you're overwhelmed and feel like you don't know where to start first, you could either figure out, what the most important part for you is - say faces and expressions - and study them seperately. Forget about all the other jazz, bodies, fur, colors. One step at a time!
Or you could go to your favorit artist and have a look at how they do the things you love about their art. Maybe even copy stuff in the beginning for practice until you get the feeling for it and understood it and be able to redo it in your own way.

I don't know any good furry drawing tutorial per se, but if you cut your mission to get better into bite-sized pieces, I'm sure you can find some simply by googling tutorial + wolf paws or whatever you decided to learn.

Oh and I think figure drawing is a great basis for furries! :^) I'm sure you can put your knowledge to good use with their bodies and all.

And for the "pulling things from your mind" part ... First of, I don't think there's a shame in using references when you need them. But if you want to broaden your mental image libary, you could learn the bits and pieces like a test? Okay, maybe that's just my weird way. But one day, I'd like to be really good at digital painting. And part of this is knowing anatomy very well. So I look at different body parts, how they are built up from bones to muscles to fat, where they are connected and try to really understand how they work. If I feel like if got it, I copy photos and try to see muscles and bones beneath the skin. If that works out well (and maybe some time hast past for the knowledge to settle?) then I try to reconstruct something from my mind. And then I look at a photograph again to compare: What stuff did stick in my brain, and what didn't? Where do I have to look into further? This may sound boring, but I really enjoy it. It feels like a really efficient way to learn certain things and it's suprisingly fast. (And I'm tired of doing the same mistakes over and over again, so being fast matters to me a lot in that case, haha.)

I hope I could help a bit! In any case, good luck and have fun :^)

Thank you so much for the well-thought-out response! I really appreciate you taking the time to help me. Man, I didn't expect a comment from someone who's art I love so much! Seriously, you draw some of the cutest stuff on this site. Your anatomy and coloring are so impressive :D Feels like I got a little note from a celebrity haha

I had never considered doing it like a test before, but that sounds like a really good idea. It'd help to drill in details that I catch myself forgetting or drawing incorrectly frequently. I think you're right that I need to build my mental image library for this kind of thing further. So much of my drawing from my classes was timed and I'd always focus more on getting the shape of the body down than on the face because getting that right feels like a whole seperate issue to tackle, if that makes sense. So consequently, faces are tricky for me. Especially furry ones since I've barely practiced them.

When I do go to draw, I now find myself more easily able to pull a body shape from memory, even if it's in a somewhat simplified state, just from doing all that figure and gesture stuff. I guess it should've been obvious then that the answer would be to just draw many more faces. I think I will try to copy from others for a little while and try to come up with a general methodology for how to construct faces and start mixing in tests for myself from photos like you suggested.

I don't think there's shame in using references either, of course! I just don't wanna NEED them for everything that I draw. I'd like to be able to just sit down and sketch and design some things all my own. I guess that's my end goal! I do feel a little overwhelmed since I got into drawing a little later in life than most, but I try not to let that discourage me.

I'll try to work up the courage to share some things soon too so that I can get critiqued. I'm hoping to get a tablet for Christmas and that'd make it a lot easier to make (and clean up) pics to post. I've had to take a break from my practice due to a back/neck injury and I'm just starting to try getting into it again. I'm thinking that with a tablet, I could spend a lot more time drawing since I could look straight at the computer screen rather than bending my neck down to look at the paper.

Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to help out a beginner like me! I think you gave me some really good advice and I'll work on putting it into practice!

Hey 💛 If its still ok i would like to chip in -

For me - i have spent many sporadic years not drawing because life happens, i have recently - for a whole year now- been actively trying to draw more

And the way i did that was with fan art, if you are passionate about anything then scribble something, other passionate people will see that and youll get more feedback, and hopefully it will encourage you to draw more frequently, i draw fan art, post it, randomly want to draw my own thing, improve a bit

And youve probably heard the whole practice makes perfect thing - if you draw a donut 100 times, donut 100 is going to be easier and have more thought on how you do the lines etc. Now when you get to draw something else you subconciously apply what you learned

Style is what feels comfortable. My style is the fact i like to use a blend tool to finish everythin - the way i draw my lines and all the things i do that make drawing fun :D

Ok so hopefully i dont sound like a venting arsehole, maybe theres some useful stuff, i would love to see what you put out 💛 i wish you much luck

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me! Sorry for the late response, life has been hectic and I haven't had a chance to draw lately either.

I feel sorta awkward doing fan art because what I make is inevitably not as good as the original haha. But you're right, that is a good way to attract an audience and start getting feedback from a wider variety of people.

And naw, you don't sound like an ass or anything. Hopefully when things calm down for me I'll be able to start drawing again and get some things posted up for critique. Thanks again, dude!