Interesting questionnn... It's almost tricky for me to define my 'first art' with kissing/touching, because we'd have to define the sense of 'accomplishment'... When I describe being really frustrated with my own skill, I was ~14-18 for that, and agonized about not being able to feel as though I was getting anywhere with my pieces... but I had technically drawn kissing/touching repeatedly during those years... and I had even done it as a child haha. A lot of my art in the single digits was of twee love stories happening between animals, like... two squirrels falling in love, kissing, having babies, nursing babies, it was all like this. Little bobbleheads pressing their snouts together in a kiss, a heart above them. Of course... as I aged, I started to desire things outside of my skill level. Thus commence my agony over my art.

While I'm here, I'll mention I vividly remember my first real drawing of Sex. It was when I was 11, in the 6th grade, hunched over a little notebook that functioned as a diary of mine. I drew my human OCs at the time, as a plusle and minun having sex... somewhat inspired by a comic/animation I had seen online (that was a joke about, magnetism or wtfever, but my brain was like 💦 ssssex...) It was entirely crude, on par with my depictions of kissing at the time; just two chibi creatures in doggystyle position. But was very bold in my mind. Ahhh... he's fucking herrrr.... I'm drawinggg the mating, not just the babies that result in it...

From then on you can imagine many haphazard attempts at sex, kiss, touch, that feel flimsy and immaterial. Years of this, crying, etc etc. Because I was miserable about my skill, I'm not sure when I felt as though I actually 'managed' it — it didn't feel as though it happened with a singular piece... I had to make an overall improvement in my art, to feel better. I'd say at 18-19, I felt as though I could finally pose bodies and draw humans. I remember pieces like this feeling like a major improvement to my history of drawing humans as stick figures. But ehh it took being 21-22 to actually feel more competent, consistently enough... I don't have many examples readily on hand but this at least conveys a casual/looseness with interactions... More confidence?? Overall you could say. I started doing commissions more often around then as well, which I would say further trained my muscles for depicting various kinds of intimacy.

I would say the overall positive feeling of having improved at this... Is extremely satisfying. I find that there's a lot more satisfaction looking back and reminiscing on pieces especially... Perhaps it's less explosively 'in the moment' euphoria, but rather, a lot of lasting self-satisfaction, pride, in what has been accomplished... I like seeing things I did 2, 5, 7 years ago, that still make me go 'yesss I was on it!!' 'this is so crazy of me lol' 'this rules...' And I feel as though I can so often think, me as a kid would be soo into this... He would be agog at what I do now... He'd appreciate both the skills to execute them and the raw concepts.... It'd blow his mind.

Which feels verrry good to think about... I still have my low points, of feeling crude and not very capable, but there's plenty of positive moments to make up for it. ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶