lot of really stupid art discourse going around these days making me think i need to go back to doing purely traditional art. i do digital cuz of anxiety about material costs and storage, but it seems every year the digital art community becomes more entitled, lazy, and inauthentic.

i'm not just talking about generative ai bullshit, either. that one is pretty cut and dry.

but lately i've seen people claim that tracing a model you didn't make is somehow no less your own work than actually fucking drawing it yourself free-handed. also a lot of people somehow simultaneously claiming they CAN'T draw freehand... thereby disputing their own point... and/or claiming that tracing is no more 'cheating' than the undo button, as if learning how a thing works and where to put your lines to represent it visually is no more difficult than manually erasing or re-drawing a single line.

i love digital art because of how accessible it is. no worrying about expensive materials, and no worrying about ruining a piece and wasting time and effort re-doing it from scratch if you mess up a little. so many free art programs and you can make it with a standard computer mouse/other device or even your finger tip- no need for a fancy pen and tablet. do i use a tablet and a slightly fancy art program? yes, but i also don't sometimes, and at most it makes my art look a tad less smooth. using those tools doesn't magically give me anatomy/perspective skill or enable me to make something i couldn't make without it, it just changes the style a little bit, same as when i draw traditionally.

but when you trace, you aren't making any decisions about how to represent the thing or learning any observational skills- you're just copying a pre-generated shape. you're letting something/someone else tell you exactly where to place your pen on the canvas- what shapes to draw and exactly how to draw them. even heavy referencing still requires you to study and understand your subject, and how to move your pen to recreate those shapes, instead of just mindlessly following along. tracing just isn't the same as drawing something *yourself* and i am so disillusioned that i am having to explain/argue this with my peers, or even artists i previously admired. all this time spent admiring them for a skill i endeavored to learn myself, only to find they never actually had it...

it's just so depressing seeing so many people i thought were on my side as fellow artists disregard originality and learning in favor of producing a product quickly.

---continued after posting---

i know i am not an amazingly talented OR skilled artist. in fact lately i've been wondering if i fall closer on the 'internal visualization' scale to having aphantasia than all the artists i look up to, with how blurry and dark my mental images are and how heavily i rely on references to draw anything decent. but i always took pride in what i make being made purely from my own effort, even if it's nothing really beautiful, and i still want to believe that hard work can get me to where the artists i admire are, skill-wise. this whole tracing discourse has been so depressing to me because it makes me wonder if i actually just CAN'T learn those skills, if so many people i THOUGHT had learned them were just cheating this entire time, and the others were just naturally gifted in ways that can't be replicated by pure skill/effort.

disclaimer; i have *loosely* traced my own models that i made myself for a FEW art pieces, but i try to always disclose that and am trying to get away from it by building my own skill through studies/references, and i don't condone/endorse tracing even your own models in an art competition where many people won't even have the option of doing the same, since 3d is not as accessible as 2d digital art. certainly after all this discourse i'm going to endeavor to avoid tracing even more than i was before, as well as 'cheaty' digital art tools like deform and copy/paste.

it's just such an insane argument to me on numerous levels. tracing is not the same as referencing and drawing yourself. tracing a model or image that YOU MADE YOURSELF is VERY different from tracing something you DIDN'T make, and far more acceptable, but still not the same as free-hand drawing. and i really don't see how expecting people to use only their own skills in an art competition, even if a very low-stakes 'just for fun' one, is 'cruel' or 'unreasonable'.

the vinegar smell that was plaguing my hvac is finally gone. everything online and everyone we talked to said it had to be mold, but we looked through EVERYTHING and didn't see squat, so we were at a loss. turns out it was bacteria? 'microbes' invisible to the naked eye, just on the cooling coil, right above the furnace. when the furnace turned on, it heated the bacteria, which created the vinegar smell. sprayed it down with antimicrobial spray and i can breathe again!

suddenly just a day or two after being blocked by the vibe-coding bluesky dev 'why', i get a 403 error when trying to connect to the site, but my husband on the same internet who wasn't blocked can still access it. is anyone else experiencing the 403 error today, and/or can confirm whether or not there's a consistent correlation here?

edit; i can still access it via private browsing. wtf.

4-27 update; finally it works again

turns out it takes an awful long time to go through years of submission notifications :V trying to get it done before the big purge. don't feel like it'll be a big loss if i don't tho. i follow a lot of folks for their skill rather than their content which means while the art is all very pretty, i don't feel much attachment for it or interest in saving it in my favorites (if i saved every beautiful thing i would never find anything in there, it'd be pointless).

as i go through it all tho, i'm wondering if the reason i've felt better about my art lately is that i haven't been here looking at all this amazing art by other people. seen some pieces similar in concept to things i worked real hard on and they make my stuff look like absolute TRASH. maybe i could do better now but... it's hard to justify re-drawing something old (especially a commission) when i've got new stuff i want to do.



also don't worry about my latest posts if you don't like pixel art. i still draw normally and i want to get into painting as well soon. pixel is just a new style added to my repertoire, it's not replacing what i've been working on all this time.

everything sucks and i'm sustaining myself on digimon art and games- working on a continuation of this; https://www.furaffinity.net/view/63474829/ that will include all four suits and i'm about halfway done! pixel art is pretty much my least favorite kind of art but i really like balatro and digimon and this is a fun project to chip away at. as frustrating as it can be, at least i'm learning and creating something that others will be able to enjoy as well.

haven't touched my nsfw account in way too long but frankly i'm too ace to really care enough to put in the significant effort that art takes me just to depict my own hyper-specific character/kink combos that nobody else is interested in, and doing nsfw commissions almost always made me uncomfortable, with how i most often seemed to get bites from folks into the shit that doesn't get done much for a reason, or folks who don't seem to realize i myself am female and so certain ways of talking about female bodies will naturally not be cool to me! (if you've commissioned me multiple times i am NOT talking about you, you're great and i hope to work with you again someday!)

it just wasn't a fun time over there and i firmly believe that art should be fun. thus the current digimon fixation and lack in sales here (the sales often also attracted primarily fetishists even when i really just wanted to make clean art). there's also still some issues with my paypal and such stopping me with coms, but i think the break has been and will continue to be very good for my art and sanity. and we all know sanity is in short supply these days.

oh also i lost a bunch of art recently that i had been making in the game 'rising world', stuff like this; https://www.furaffinity.net/view/55096790/ and it REALLY did a number on my emotional state, so i spent a lot of time just reeling from that and then trying to rebuild what i could.

so tldr; just trying to survive over here, just like the rest of you. hope you're well and i apologize for my absence but assure you it's been necessary, so i hope you understand.

if you want 4 hours of awesome digital fun, FOR FREE, i recommend the digimon story; time stranger demo. pc, ps5, xbox something or other. IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/.....Time_Stranger/

i mean i was already pretty fucking hyped for the full game, but i really can't believe they gave us this much of it FOR FREE ahead of time, and after playing it to the end, i can confidently say that all the hype is justified. it's so fucking good. i'm in love. cyber sleuth was good but this is better in literally every way.

probably gonna be fewer attacks than usual cuz this year continues to be a nightmare, but i maintain my stance of always revenging folks who attack me with art that respects my permissions, so if you want something from me, come get it; https://artfight.net/~AlphaGodith

don't currently have the setup for normal commissions (paypal broke on me with no explanation and i haven't made the transition to stripe yet) and not really interested in doing the usual mermay ones anymore anyway (especially not while fa isn't even accepting uploads so it would be awkward to advertise and post for). i injured my hand pretty bad last time and it's been mostly weird fetish stuff for a long time, when i really just want to do cool design work and focus on the beauty of sealife. (nothing against fetish stuff, i have another account solely for that, it just isn't what i want to do right now)

anybody got any INTERESTING mermaid characters? or realistic aquatic anthros? or creatures/monsters you wouldn't really call a mermaid but follow the general bodyplan with a finned tail instead of lower legs, and arms on top?

i was considering drawing a mermaimon or ancient mermaimon because fuck yeah digimon, but the cleavage focus turned me off. maybe if nobody has anything for me i'll just redesign them to be less horny.

keep thinking i should open up for commissions cuz i do need the funds but MAN am i enjoying being able to draw things -i- want to draw for a change.

...and also my prices are so low that i'm really cheating myself with them... like that unimon pic took me around 10 hours, and i'd only charge like 35 bucks for it??? that's not even close to my country's already stupidly low minimum wage!
but who would be willing to pay 100 bucks for something like that, from such an unknown and slow artist as me? idk... i want to keep my prices low so anyone can get something from me, but what's the point of having low prices if i can never open because it just straight up isn't worth the amount of time and effort i put in? especially when i'm old enough that i actually get hand pain/damage from trying to work at a decent pace for people...

also having some issues with paypal. like actual technical issues, on TOP of hating them as a company and all the fees. i want to switch to stripe maybe cuz it's the oldest alternative i know of, but i don't know anybody who uses it that i trust enough to advise me on it, and i also have some bank stuff i need to switch first for other reasons as well...

what's a free email i can use that doesn't shove ai down your throat and is actually designed to work well on a pc instead of a phone? obviously i can't use google or yahoo anymore and search engines have degraded to such a point that all my attempts to find something myself have been worse than useless.

my favorite comfort game that i won't shut up about is on sale for 11$ right now! it's an exploration/survival/crafting/building game, sort of similar to minecraft but more realistic and detailed, with more of a focus on building and the ability to do so at a useable scale with high detail, AND the ability to export those builds as obj files! survival features are still being developed and the developer is a super chill guy that anyone can talk to and discuss features with- i've contributed a lot of tweaks to the game this way myself.

again, it's just 11$ right now, and you can make some REALLY cool stuff in it, and the world is beautiful, and it's just a great way to escape the horrors.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/...../Rising_World/

this is a sculpture i made in the game btw; https://www.furaffinity.net/view/55096790/ and the house frame on the store page with the blueprint table in front of it was made by my husband, board by board. (tho you can skip that and just build whole walls at once if you prefer)

i shouldn't have to say it, but these are the way things are, so, for the record, people who unironically nazi salute, those who cheer when they do so, and those who think it's fine/not a big deal are not my friends and i will not tolerate them. feel free to unwatch me if you feel targeted by this journal.

the world is pretty much ending and i dunno about you but i'm gonna try and enjoy what time we have left and help others do the same by spreading kindness where i can.

happy new year.

i just realized i've never been commissioned nor heard of someone commissioning a SPECIFIC resolution/ratio image so they can use it as a phone wallpaper or desktop background. huh.

you know how when a lot of really bad shit happens but you keep on trucking and get through it okay and you're looking forward to this one simple thing to help you keep going and then that one simple thing completely crashes and burns and something that would be silly to get more than mildly upset about on its own thus completely devastates you in a completely unrecoverable way?

yeah

disappointment, fear, and rage aside, i will try to be there for people affected by these disastrous results as much as i can. if you fear the regime coming down on your head, you can use screenshots of digicode text to communicate with me. it is a simple cypher you can easily find online but i doubt the machine translators will pick up on it.

okay it's technically a mini tv series but it only takes about 2 hours to watch the whole thing. it's only on amazon unfortunately but you can watch it for free if you have prime or get a free trial, which they pretty much are always offering (just remember to cancel it when you're done so it doesn't start auto-charging you, which really should be illegal...)

trailer; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGxCmkPjCNk
watch it here; https://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Triangle/dp/B0DH9CGSTD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Y10JL905R64A&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Yp2tyxF_jxw0OOCxH9vhRQ.J9W3ljUjxbPl39mSHRDVc76WICSVhbr8X_4jponIKKk&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+edge+of+sleep&qid=1729783611&s=instant-video&sprefix=the+edge+of+sle%2Cinstant-video%2C202&sr=1-1

it's an indie-made show and some bigwig has made a deal with markiplier that if it can get in the top 10 over an average 30 day period, he will get to send his ACTUAL horror movie, iron lung, to theaters. and hollywood is a bunch of pricks so that's pretty much the only way we'll get to see that movie.

trailer; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8E8Ryx49so

so check it out if you like horror/drama, just want to support indie devs/stick it to the man, or just as a favor to me! and if you like it, please tell others about it! as part of the deal it's not getting ANY actual advertising so we have to do it all by word of mouth!

i really wanted to do witch and wizard related coms this month but i have been struggling with a few things and refuse to open more slots until my current work is done, to be fair to my current clients. i am still here and wanting to do art tho, it's just slow going.
i wanna do inscryption and digimon fanart too... i even figured out how to make the inscryption cards actually playable in-game! and i got a minecraft texture pack to upload and-

anyone else think we need 'i survived the 2024 fa outage and all i got was this lousy t-shirt' t-shirts? and the proceeds could go towards the gofundme? (and i'm just saying outage and not hijacker or somethin' cuz i don't feel they deserve the honor of having a more direct acknowledgement)

it's right at the top of the page but in case you don't pay attention to that, this is something super important for the continued existence of fur affinity that you should look into;

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10933053

if fur affinity dies or makes a deal with ai assholes to keep running, remember you can find me and my art on tumblr, pixiv, and newgrounds. tumblr has super handy tag blacklist functions, and both tumblr and pixiv have multiple images per post functions. pixiv also specifies that any ai posts must be labeled as such and can easily be filtered out. newgrounds... well it's newgrounds i guess. i also respond to dms on discord (just remember to actually tell me why you are friending me asap) and my username is always alphagodith.

less than two days left (the fight was extended out of july briefly due to outages during) and i just finished all my revenges so that's it for me this year as far as artfight goes (not gonna try and do more when nobody would have time to revenge anyway). didn't do as much as i wanted but with a hand injury it was more than i expected i'd be ABLE to do, plus got some real nice attacks and made some friends! so, i'm callin' it a win regardless of the actual outcome.

i'll be taking a little break to make sure i don't re-injure my freshly healed hand and then working on owed art before i open up any more slots, possibly as early as september but could be as late as november. we'll see. if you didn't see my last journal, i'll only be opening for four slots at a time, so, if you do want something, start thinking it up now and check my commission tab for options. i'll probably give it a week and if i get more than four requests, i'll just take whichever appeal to me most.

i've been struggling with varying forms of hand pain all month, and most of last month as well, making it difficult for me to draw, and forcing me to take many days entirely off, as well as wearing braces and heat pads and things.

i believe it's a result of how hard i pushed myself to do so many, so detailed mermay commissions. those were supposed to be way rougher but i tried too hard to make them pretty, and i worked myself for too many hours each day to try and get them done within the month.
trying to do as many coms as i can in a limited time frame is very taxing to begin with, and selling them at a discount on top of that was just stupid. i pushed myself EXTRA hard for LESS money, ensuring an injury that didn't even get me enough to be worth the pain/damage.

i certainly don't want to risk losing the ability to draw entirely, so i'm not going to do any more themed month-long sales. my prices are already very low anyway. i may open for themed commissions sometimes, but rather than being discounted it will be normal prices and i just won't take any orders that aren't that theme. and no more than 4 slots per month. if you want even cheaper art, you're going to have to go for my 'minimum effort' option, since that's the only way for it to be fair to me.

i'm going to have a greatly lessened presence on artfight this year due to developing carpal tunnel syndrome and also just being a bit busy, but i will maintain my policy of revenge. you draw my boy https://artfight.net/character/3036552.wizardmon for me, i'll draw something of similar point value for you. for more info; https://artfight.net/info/about (remember this is during july only, drawing attacks for artfight in june is against the rules)

also, tomorrow is my birthday :P

if you are commissioning art of a dog, you don't want a picture of a cat, right? and i don't want to spend hours upon hours drawing something only to be told 'that isn't right, re-do it' upon completion.

going back-and-forth with clients to try and parse what a character should look like takes significant time out of artists' schedules that could be used to actually make art, and thus costs us money, on top of just being annoying. having a proper reference sheet so we don't NEED to clarify things, or so any such messages are minimal, is SO nice, and not only makes our lives as artists easier but ensures that YOU will be happy with the art you get. remember; if it isn't shown on the ref YOU provide us, then we will interpret it however we want, and are under no obligation to 'correct' our art for you.

so here are some simple suggestions for getting yourself a reference sheet that artists you commission will be happy to work with;



1. TEXT SUPPLEMENTS. it is not always clear in every style what sex or species a character is, especially toony or amateur art and with characters that don't strictly conform to stereotypes. in realistic or semi-realistic styles, and even in toony ones if the artist cares enough, these things DO change how we draw characters, and are thus important to clarify in text, since we may not be able to tell from the image alone. even if your character has markings that are typically associated with a particular species, it is still very helpful to include text confirmation of the intended species, since it is not at all uncommon for furries to have unrealistic markings, nor will every artist know about every possible animal species AND be able to recognize it at a glance. i've seen dogs with tiger stripes, and frankly, a lot of art on here there really isn't any difference between dogs and cats, so again, DO NOT assume your character's species is obvious. at minimum, you should have the character's name, age(not every character is mid-twenties and chibi styles make it IMPOSSIBLE to tell age), sex(and gender identity/pronouns if different), and species written on the ref. other text should be VERY minimal- time is money and many artists will outright ignore text if there is too much of it.

tldr; your reference should have as minimal text on it as possible, but be sure to include your character's name, age, sex (biological- if different from identity, include that too), species, and height. these are important details that may not be evident due to the art style of the images, and will have an impact on how others draw the character.


2. MULTIPLE VIEWS. unless your character is a very basic species and all one color, we need to be able to see it from multiple angles if you want us to draw them in any pose other than the one on the ref. if you don't have a back view, i can't draw the back of your character, because i have no way to know if there are markings there or what they look like. if you only have straight-on side views, and your character has a marking on their neck, there is no way for me to tell if it continues under the jaw or if it stops right on the crease there. if your character's feet are flat on the ground, i can't tell if they have paw pads, or what color they are. and yes, some characters have different colored pads on their hands versus their feet, so i DO need to see both. close-ups work great if you only need to show one other thing and don't want to spend money on an entire extra fullbody to do so, and are also very useful for detailed body parts, such as faces. realistically proportioned, it can sometimes be difficult to tell what color a character's eyes are just from a fullbody, so zoomed-in headshots are also very helpful even if you have a fullbody that shows the face already. you can also do this for inner mouth and flesh shots. DO NOT cut off a character's limb in a fullbody shot to show flesh, unless you want artists to draw them missing that limb all the time. just include a little cutaway off to the side.

tldr; anything that isn't shown can't be drawn. front, side, back, even top and bottom views of a character are absolutely necessary. you don't need very many images if the pose is right, but everything must be visible SOMEWHERE.


3. NO SHADING. on some characters, with some shading styles, for some artists, it can be okay, but in 99% of cases, shading can make it difficult to tell what is markings and what is lighting, and in some, even hide entire body parts. so no, just having swatches off to the side for color picking isn't enough. it definitely helps, but a flat-colored reference is way easier to work with in almost all instances. there are some times where shading can be useful for telling texture or shape on more detailed characters, so it can be good to ALSO have a shaded version of your ref, but if you can only have one, go with flat, and simply use text supplements to mention details that shading would have shown, such as whether seemingly smooth body parts are meant to be furred, scaled, or just skin, and things like that.

tldr; either provide both a shaded and a flat colored reference, or ONLY a flat colored one. shading makes markings and other details difficult to see.


4. CLOTHED AND NUDE. remember that if you don't show it, we can't draw it. if you give me a ref of a fully clothed character and ask me to draw them in a swimsuit, i am going to reject the commission, because i do not want to go back and forth guessing and being corrected on what the character looks like under their clothes. this also goes the other way- if you show me a nude ref but want me to draw them in a situation where they would be dressed, you need to show me the clothes you want me to put them in, or be willing to accept whatever tacky, out-of-character style i might come up with on my own for them.
additionally, for adult artwork, you need an adult reference sheet. i have seen artists misunderstand a sfw smoothed-over male crotch as the character having lady bits, and they refused to correct it because they had followed the ref they had been given. even if they had interpreted the character as male, furry bits vary WILDLY so it would be unwise to assume they would draw what you had in mind without SHOWING them.

tldr; unless you only ever want your character drawn in exactly one outfit as if it is fused with their body, their nude form and other outfit samples are necessary.


5. STYLE. you should NOT make a reference sheet in a chibi/highly simplified or especially unique art style unless that is the ONLY style you want to get art of them in. if you intend to use your ref to get art from a wide variety of artists, you need it to be in a style they can ALL interpret and easily translate into their own. remember, realistic details can be simplified in many ways and still be technically accurate, but if you provide an extremely simplified reference, there's no telling how it might be interpreted or what details artists may come up with to fill in the gaps. text supplements can help a lot with this, but no artist wants to have to read what could have just been shown visually.

tldr; unless you only want a character to ever be drawn in one particular style, don't use an especially unique/stylized or simplified/chibi art style for your ref sheet.




remember, if it isn't shown on the ref you provide us, we're in no way obligated to 'fix' our art for you. don't leave up to interpretation something that matters to you.