I dunno if I have "a secret", I think I'm just straight up addicted to drawing or something if I'm being honest. I have had periods where I do draw less, for months at a time in fact, but that was due to me feeling extremely depressed and very unlike myself. Drawing for me is a way to cope, to self soothe, distract myself from other things. I pretty much go through most days with a sense of overthinking and anxiety, and drawing allows me to escape that whirlpool and just focus on one thing at a time. So for me, if I haven't drawn for a day, it feels WEIRD and uncomfortable, like I've got some sort of nagging itch. I understand that a lot of people absolutely do not have this relationship with art, sometimes for them it can feel like more trouble than it's worth, or a dissatisfaction with how works turn out vs the amount of effort put in can be crushing. I do feel stuff like that, certainly. Though the feeling is never enough to keep me from at least drawing something once a day because for me, it's what keeps me sane.

I think I have felt a sense of burnout before with art, and that's when I was in situations when I had to rely so much on art to get me things for my livelihood. I understand that for me, a career in art would probably put too much pressure on me to the point where I would just want to avoid doing it. When you have that pressure, you can't enjoy art for what it is, it has this importance placed so heavily onto it I can't even think about drawing clearly. It's that heavy expectation that kills my drive for me. I don't feel that with commissions, because for as professional as I try to be, it's informal. People understand that I may take my time, have things happen, etc. Cuz when you commission someone they know I'm ultimately just one person doing this on my own.

Personally? No, I have not. I've been using Paypal for a very long time, made an account when I was 13 and didn't even have a bank account (for the record, don't do this.) I've never had a client attempt to charge me back or scam me, and I haven't had my account locked. I think there is a lot of good advice out there on how to use Paypal safely but the biggest thing I could say is: Do NOT let a balance sit in your paypal account, I know there have been situations where pp thinks you are doing something fishy and will freeze your stuff, not allowing you to transfer funds to your bank account. As soon as you have money in there, send it to your bank. I've also been using invoices rather than having clients send money to me for years know bc from what I understand it provides protections for the seller and buyer. Most important thing though is to indicate that you're selling goods that do not need to be shipped.

Ohh he was 10000% genuine, he did not have much of a backstory when created, and was mostly me as a kid trying to flex my sparkledog creating muscle. I was heavily inspired by bluekyokitty's fursona at the time, as well as another artist I think was called hypercarrot. I approached making him with the idea that he was a blank dog and his white body was just going to be a canvas for me to doodle on, hence the bird made of paint floating over his head in the original pic. The design ended up being pretty complex for me and I only ever ended up drawing him one other time as a kid. He was just sort of meant to be like, an embodiment of my creativity? I did want to say though that his checkerboard torso marking with arrows is based on the fact that I was sitting on on my school's chess club at the time, and I was inspired by the movement of the chess pieces. I think the only accurate chess move on there though is the knight/horse, the rest I just made up.

I did revamp him as a teen to be a dragqueen inspired character, but that revamp didn't go very far lore-wise. So now I just appreciate him for what I originally made him for, an honor to my childhood sense of creativity. I really appreciate the positive response that design has gotten, it makes little kid me inside feel like she got some recognition hehe

This is always such a hard question for me to answer... I feel like the list I could make on this would either run too long or not long enough. Also, I've just got a bit of an insecurity in feeling that maybe I am leaning too hard on specific influence and people can just tell. Critics n shit always mention things like this when reviewing art, that a sign of someone who's a bit of an amateur is someone who's influences are too obvious and not perfectly blended into a delicious fine art smoothie or something. I will try to list some artists though, I'll stick mostly to ones I've followed online, since I feel like I learned most of my art skills through the internet artists I look up to.

Note: I'm going in order of artists i remember following to when i was younger --> current age. Chronology is not exact by any means but you can probably get an understanding of a timeline of influence here

bluekyokitty
ash-dragon-wolf on dA
falvie
andrew hussie and a lot of the art surrounding homestuck in 2012-14 in general
lexxercise on tumblr
gripelord
squeedgemonster
OCEANSCENTED
kanotynes
maroonracoon
borninswampland
cuttle_bone
glattax
k_szk
kficc
stebvi

a lotta people in my twitter following... also all the other art that has happened to strike a chord with me, but I didn't know the artist or follow their work. Also this is just online artists I follow, there are definitely lots of other things I encounter in the real world + my friends present and past who certainly influenced my work too. Hope the list helps