in terms of explicitly furry artists, some of the more prominent influences over the years have been kenket, gothwolf/theatimos, koul, mrmosstopher (who unfortunately no longer exists online), godsofsummer, kardamon, scpkid, sgrech/nii_raskola, captyns, lundi/dirtsecret, stigmata/jonathanvair, and surely many many more who have currently slipped my mind. you can probably dig through my furaffinity favourites to get more of a feel if you're curious.

i've spoken a bit about this one before, but when i was a kid first getting into art, i used to take a lot of influence from the works of chris van allsburg (you might know him better as the author/illustrator of "the polar express" and "jumanji"). i loved his use of contrast, how he would take everyday scenes and juxtapose them with completely foreign elements, all rendered in painstakingly beautiful pencil sketches.

i'm also just a big photography nerd, so i love looking at photos, both professional and amateur. i like to try and capture that amateurish quality in my art, since i think it can add an extra level of "humanity" to it, like someone was actually there to capture that moment.

i think a lot of it for me comes down to having good references. if i have an idea in mind, i usually try and find (or take) photos that are as similar as possible to what i'm trying to achieve. almost all of my paintings are done with the default procreate round brush, though i also use the "spectra" brush if i need to add a bit of texture, or reduce the harshness of the lines. the rendering itself mostly comes down to making use of the pen pressure, and adjusting the colours slightly as i go.

practice of course helps a lot too, as does watching to see how other people render lighting. if you're interested in getting examples, james gurney has a lot of really great videos on this!
https://www.youtube.com/@JamesGurney/videos