i dont have a witty drawing for this one but im happy to answer best i can

first of all, thank you man, thats mighty high praise! bluth was very inspiring to me as a kid for sure (specifically nimh and all dogs), so i do imagine it can be felt in my art in some way

i technically went to art school but also not. i went from graphic design, which involves very little drawing in the way you see my art now, though i think it helped me think more graphically which has been good. i took some figure drawing classes but i wont say those 'taught' me anything. mostly it just forced me to do a bunch of gestures and timed studies, which you can absolutely do from home with discipline. its very good for you and i recommend it

as far as tips on finding a style and making things less stiff? the answer is boring but you draw a lot. draw so much.

theres this place where i can get thats best described as "pushing lines around" where i dont feel confident in what im sketching and im doing a lot of searching on the page and trying to jump into fine detail too quickly. im typically erasing a lot and overworking things. this is where my art is the stiffest and usually what i call my 'bad drawing days'

stiffness is frequently a lack of confidence in something, whether it be line quality, anatomy, pose, observation, etc. doing gestures or really fast observational sketches is usually how i shake off the stiffness but theres definitely a baseline that rises over time.

something i really, really recommend is drawing in pen more, and learning to work quickly and move on. do them a whole lot and i promise that act alone will yield results. i dont by any means draw in pen all the time, but i do find myself continuing to draw as if im drawing in pen even digitally, and i like what it does for me. its definitely a lasting exercise

my style has fluctuated and evolved so much over the years. i think its stabilized a bit but i expect its still evolving. try a bunch of stuff, keep what works and throw out what doesnt. theres so many little style quirks ive tried, you can definitely see various 'eras' in my art. my best advice for developing an artistic voice is being as self indulgent and obsessed in your art as possible. studies are good for developing structure but drawing what you really want to draw unapologetically is also so important. that passion will carry you a long ways and down paths you never expect. pro tip do studies but make them your ocs

arts so individual though, what works for me may mean nothing to you. half the battle is just learning what really works and prompts results. you got me yapping, thats for sure

well my favorite piece probably has a rotation period of about 2 weeks where its then replaced by something new but i suppose theres still things that i think fondly of.

back when i was doing fanart i was really proud of this all dogs go to heaven illustration, and i still really like it. im also still fond of this bambi illustration i did. i think i was cooking with oil when it came to a lot of those fanart illustrations. they were too much work to keep up with every month but damn did i try.

as far as personal illustrations? probably my comics. just as a whole, i tend to hold the art in those with higher regard for longer. i just think its really pleasing when the page comes together. it gives the illustrations more purpose, maybe? im still proud of how these pages x, x, x came together. constantly shaking myself to do more comics.

nsfw? i personally like this tony--deans a natural horndog but nsfw tony usually hits a lil different for me haha. this is one of my most viewed and fav'd drawings on FA so i guess that warrants linking it. i drew a couple new color nsfw drawings that i like but those are still a little fresh off the press and for the patreon folks heh. shameless plug for my patreon, where if you wanna see all the shit i dont post (or want to see it way early), you can find it there

bothhh? yeah, both. i dont know, i feel like theres a lot i have to say about this but its very scattered and hard to formulate.

like, okay. i think my art has improved a lot because there was some wind in my sails. this was more so relevant in the early days (tumblr). id spent 10 years prior to that as a very small artist spending a lot of time in circles where i felt like i was drawing for attention or to fit in. pretending to be someone i wasnt, i guess? tony & dean was where i decided no more, im going to draw what i like, and it was really, really cool to have people care about my characters in particular. thats still the coolest part and the thing that keeps me drawing the hardest, most days. it encouraged me to draw and pursue things i liked and thought were neat. i wanted to draw more than ever before and was excited to think about and write for my characters. it pushed me a lot to want to get better at art, and so i practiced and studied. my art has come a long way, like holy shit, im miles from where i was all those years ago. so yeah! that was beneficial to me as an artist. not a necessary thing, i could have improved my art and voice without it, but it definitely helped shape who i am as an artist today.

the following was also great for building up my commissions, which went a long way in supporting me, especially through college. im never going to pretend like a larger audience doesnt = a higher chance of making money online. it absolutely does. maybe not as much as people think it makes, but yknow.

on the other hand, my main account stresses me out. like, a lot. that might have more to do with the fact that this is twitter, and maybe if it were any other website i would feel differently. but this is twitter. it feels like theres a spring loaded trap ready to go off and everyone will point like, 'i knew you were a bad person, oh, death! death for 100 years! meritless!'. i didnt feel this way on tumblr, but i guess my following was only like, 1/3rd of whats on my main now. i feel like there was a different vibe there, too..i dont know what it was, it felt different though.

i get the same feeling opening main and interacting on there that i would if i was delivering a speech to a huge theater of people. i feel like i try to become as invisible as possible by removing any form of my personality. i feel like a brick wall. hi, i have social anxiety.

part of my experience at TFF was standing in various crowded rooms and thinking "i bet theres people in here that hate me and ive never even met them." thats a weird thought to have! twitter has done weird things to my brain. when i was younger i definitely had social anxiety, but i dont think it was as bad as ive got it now.

another part of "the stage" of posting on main is the feeling like it can only be polished work. i cant post wips, or my unfinished projects, or my B tier art, or anything that might be boring, and it has to look good in the media feed, and i certainly cant miss the good posting hour for ultimate engagement, because my arts on performance and if its going to perform by damn its going to perform well.

so i get mentally and emotionally fed up with it and just...decide i dont feel like posting there. i cant be bothered to want to upload art or talk about anything im drawing or writing. i realize a lot of these are made up problems, i think thats where the perfectionism in me starts to make me dysfunctional again. but i also think this is all amplified by how weird it feels to be on twitter. like as a society, i think the internet as a concept does weird things to us. thats a whole other essay though, brother. this ones long enough.

so there you have it. its decidedly, both.

alright when i was 5 or something i wanted to get my ears pierced, and so naturally i went to claires. i survived my encounter and for some reason they gave me this prize..thing? it was a little poodle figurine that youd put on a cake or something. i dont really know why they gave it to me. but from then on out my fate was sealed. i really liked poodles. here's a photo of some poodles from my childhood. there were.... way more poodles. most of them have been lost to time.

so when it came time to make the man himself, i just kinda drew a poodle guy and went. yeah, him. it all comes full circle. im shocked it took so long to make a poodle character but to be honest, tony and dean were the first furry characters i made where i told myself i could be as indulgent as i wanted to be and boy did it pay off. still rotating them in my head like a rotisserie chicken to this day

ok so, when i draw and make furry characters, the like. logistics? of being a furry arent something i really care to consider. i dont carve out a space in my world where dean has to shave his whole body unless he wants to be the poof monstrosity. or like, the ramifications of shedding over everything. furry is definitely an aesthetic choice for me, i just think drawing animals is more fun and creatively stimulating and i dont get a lot out of the "world building" aspect of a furry world.

regardless, dean does spend a healthy amount of time on his hair routine and making sure it stays healthy and moisturized. you know he's got those silk pillow cases

so my inspirations are all over the place and are often unrelated to furry art. early childhood inspirations are going to be animation, specifically stuff like secret of nimh and other don bluth films, watership down, lord of the rings (the bakshi film..yeah it gets hated on but also theres some mad vibes in there), last unicorn, fox and the hound (a lot of disney animation), balto, stuff like that. theres so much animation that influenced me honestly. my grandfather collected a shitton of animated vhs movies and had hundreds of tapes in the basement that i cut my teeth on and watched while learning to draw

as a Kid on the Internet i really liked black blood alliance and all the other wolf comics. kahvie is another early art inspiration i remember really taking ahold of me, and i think that one can still be visually felt. ive had a couple people come to me in the past asking if i was kahvie haha it makes me sad that they disappeared.. i hope theyre okay out there.

returning to furry, SE Case (EestStreatDrug) is an artist ive been following for a really long time, their comic Cheap Thrills is a long time art and writing inspiration and its totally still a comic that updates and is amazing and you should read it and sub to their patreon.

another comic i adore is the clementine comics. miss those comics dearly, hope the artist is doing well.

uhhhh flash round of random artists off the top of my head that i really like repoghost (my icon + header here), lilaira, commissionsbyj, purplebirdman, goyagoat, epseelutely, lucjan_, marsoid, kalpeakoira, houndsaint, beksinski, leyendecker, ummm uhhh. theres a lot more. i like a lot of things. this doesnt even start to tackle film and music and other forms of art. bloodborne is my favorite game, write that down. i get my inspirations from everywhere, like, just basic life stuff, honestly. oh heres a weird thing i really like, i love to buy old photo collections off of ebay. just like, peoples old family photos that no one wants (which is both sad and fascinating to me). i love the collections from the 70s-90s. i dont know, theres a lot of beautiful stuff in there, just people living their lives. its really inspiring.

wow this was long winded and it feels like it only touches the surface. hi i like art