I dont, but twitter/bluesky and patreon is where its at apparently.
You gotta follow artists like a hawk and jump on any opportunity, people be waiting 5+ years for a chance at a slot from their favorite artists.

I see artist I follow here post journals about upcoming and current open commissions all the time.

As for commissions and patreon, I'm not sure which you are thinking of but my experience been; Your paying for the exclusive and or early access content and they might do open commissions first via patreon and then if still open slots via the public. In essence the first chance at a commission is an another patreon bonus. Which is how I did a commission this past summer.

I did see a SFW artist I wanted to commission post one slot that instantly got filled, missed it by a couple hours while I slept as I work 3rd shift. I ended up sending them a message saying I know I missed the slot but been wanting to commission them for this piece if a future slot opened and they were totally cool and added me too. Though I do know some artist can be hostile towards random messaging if they have alot of followers and get bugged a ton.

Trippledot right about following favorite artist on twitter and bluesky and jumping like a hawk when they open.

Though truth be told I usually stick to YCHs

yeah artists do that, i'm talking about the ones that are never open for new commissions yet their queue increases.

I can't name artists on here but I can think of at least 3 that just accept commission via Patreon and don't use it for rewards.

I never ran into those myself. What I have run into are artist that take on more work than they can keep up with and keep adding to their too do list continually being behind but taking on more in order to have income, they must realize at some point that they are unable to deliver on everything

Most of the time I reach out to artists I'm interested in and ask when when they'll be opening commissions. People so far have been quite receptive. Some actually even offered to ping me whenever they're about to open them. So far I haven't had a bad experience doing this.