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I'm just gonna have this as helpful notes- I would love to draw taurs-

SHAKES YOU how do you draw taurs. i need help i genuinley cant wrap my head around the anatomy of it. optionally i need help with fat taurs but any kind of taur is okay

Ooh, I love these sorta questions!!!

So there are two main things folks usually struggle with when it comes to drawing taurs as a whole. 1, they struggle with quadrupedal anatomy and 2. connecting the humanoid upper body to the quadrupedal lower body. Obviously there's no shame in either of these things, drawing four legged animals, especially if you're more used to the anatomical structure of something more humanoid is quite tough! And finding the sweet spot where humanoid and quadruped meet to make a taur is a bit of a struggle for folks who're still figuring it out.

So! The first thing you wanna do really is just familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy. Look at the skeleton of the creature you're trying to taur and see how things like their limbs bend differently or how they're just differently naturally posed as compared to someone who walks upright.

This is a very simplified skeleton of a cat, but you can pretty immediately see how differently everything bends. And I'm not saying it's something you have to perfectly master to know how to draw a taur (especially when you get to drawing fat taurs), but i highly recommend becoming familiar with how a quadrupedal body is structured, the silhouette of most animals is quite misleading! And absolutely use reference!

Heck, our first go at drawing taur Riley was super heavily referenced (I'll even share the ref image if anyone is interested!), and this still came out real jank. Practice makes perfect!

As for connecting the upper body to the lower body, this is a little more subjective and up to you, but I'll lay out some general guidelines.

Generally speaking, you wanna put the humanoid torso where the base of the neck is, the front of the torso kinda merging with the rest of the taur body just after the tummy, basically just before the crotch starts.

As for the back, you're gonna want to shoot for just shy of where the butt starts, waist having curved back outwards. It gets a little awkward if you go higher or lower than that. And obviously, you wanna make sure the torso is firmly planted in the center of where the neck should be, ehehe.

That's pretty much the basics though! As always, i recommend looking at how your favorite taur artists draw the creatures and studying off of that! Familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy, and use reference!! You will absolutely get it down with time. I will absolutely cover fat taurs if there's interest in it, and ofc, lemme know if there's anything I missed or need to go over! I hope this helps!

Overcorrecting

Actual canon:

Furthermore:

I get wanting to distance yourself from old inaccurate fanon but recently it feels like the fandom is just being contrarian and overcorrecting so much they create a new fanon, just in the opposite direction

the stats spiral

That's what I call it when I start obsessing over the numbers I get on fics or posts. When I refresh AO3 every five or ten minutes to see if I've got more hits or kudos. When I keep my tumblr activity page open in a tab to see new notes as soon as they come in.

It's not fun. Not really. Even when I sometimes tell myself it is.

You see, it starts out exciting! I've put a thing out there and now I get to see the reactions to it! I'm like a kid on their birthday who can't wait to see their presents. What are people going to say? Will they like it? Will they talk to me about it?

I'm lucky enough that I do get notes on tumblr posts and I do get comments and kudos when I post on AO3. But depending on how excited I am about the thing that I made and depending on how uncertain I am of whether it's any good, I want to get a lot more attention than I end up getting.

I know that that's a normal feeling. I know it's even a rational one! I've put a lot of effort into making something, or I've made something that I think my community will like, and not hearing back like I'd hoped can sometimes feel like rejection. It can be a huge disappointment that makes me doubt myself, my abilities, my connection to my community.

That's why I say it's not fun. Because even though 'engagement' can give me a really high high, it can also give me a really low low.

When I finally realize I'm in one of those lows (and it sometimes takes me a while to realize that I am), that's when I know that I need to step away.

When it's really bad, I just stop posting until I'm in a better mental space. For me, I now recognize that those feelings are often coming from me wanting a connection of some kind. The need for attention is coming from a feeling of loneliness or isolation, and so I need to counteract that by reaching out to people I know and care about to have a chat or a meal or just some time spent doing something communal.

When I can catch it early, then I force myself to close the activity tab here on tumblr and hide whatever stats are making me spiral on AO3. I've learned to recognize that I'm looking to those metrics as a way to feel important or special or cared for in some way and that I need to figure out where I'm feeling insecure in my life and how to get some reassurance - because strangers on the internet won't be able to give me what I need.

If you're currently spiraling, first of all lemme give you a hug ❤️ I hope you can take some time and figure out what it is that you want those stats to tell you about yourself or what it is that you think those stats will give you that you're not getting from somewhere else.

And if you haven't heard it lately, I'm glad that you're in this world - no matter what kind of numbers you have on your posts.

The first image is a reference I found on Pinterest, I'm not sure who the original artist is. But if anyone does know, comment the original artist, or original artist comment yourself and let me know, so proper credit can be given.

Below that is my own drawing and I'll sign my art with 'HPT' for 'Hot-Pink Tsunami' or part of my username initials 'ATW'. This is the first thing going up I guess.-

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