I personally have no idea how or when or even why self-consciousness or shame develops in relation to this all myself... maybe broader social media in early life effects something? I don't feel any scrupulosity about like, watching a documentary or reading a scientific article and utilizing that footage or diagrams... this is objectively the only way to get good at drawing anything, is to study it carefully. Imagine trying to draw lamps while afraid of studying photos of lamps too closely.... my god.

When I was a child I mostly read/watched nonfiction, I owned a lot of informative booklets, care guides, encyclopedia of species or breeds... and I always applied these closely obviously, to my stories, drawings, worlds. I'd buy Cat Fancy magazines and then scour the final pages for breeder advertisements that contained websites I could look up, so I could stare at all of their Siamese kittens, and draw inspiration from that... learn learn learn... watch documentaries... agility competitions, on TV...

as a kid I'd like, finally get my grubby mits on a hamster care guide that had 1 BIG GLOSSY JPEG of hamsters mating, finally helping me to understand and study what I'd only read descriptions of in most care guides. Eating the informations like a desperate beggar, no second guessing in my MIND about the, morality of this ?!?! no my brain is too fast too ready, to apply this knowledge to thinking about Hamtaro and Bijou!!!!!! AT LAST, KNOWLEDGE!!! KNOWLEDGE TO LIVE!!!!! I'm not merely PULLING THINGS OUT OF MY ASS!!!!

as for the 'weirdness' or 'uncomfortable' aspect... maybe you have problems with, your own sexuality...? Or feeling spectated, what others think of you, how you're judged or perceived...? Do you like, engage with a lot of community and discussion about this on a regular basis, does it take space in your daily life? Do your friends discuss or worry about this...? I would assume it's less about ferals specifically and more about the entire concept of fantasy/fiction or what art or motivation means to you, maybe that's poorly defined or foggy for you? It's 'weird' to think about Hamtaro or Bijou having sex whether or not I look at diagrams about actual hamster mating ... it's such a trivial detail. Feeling bad for ... going to flickr.com and, typing in hamster??????? NOT AT ALL, I was just laughing the other day finding a photo of an aardvark asleep with a boner...! And it taught me about AARDVARKS! I said wow, information...! Nod nod... back to my drawings! I show my husband and friend the aardvark boner photo... we all laugh and say wow, wow... learning...

in many ways it is often more dubious to look at human porn LOL, I have to worry about what the people in this were going through... under what circumstances was this filmed... how was this distributed... I am not worried about this content sleepy aardvark... he's having a great life... not worried about this hamster mating glossy jpeg...

I have.... NO IDEA!!!! when or why I'd develop reservation about this ?!??! what am I... doing... that is wrong? Why feel 'weird' about it? In what way is what I am doing really even so different from what the... person illustrating the diagram in the encyclopedia, or filming the documentary, or taking the photographs, or sculpting the clay figure... is doing... I don't think drawing porn is cosmically important as a context. In the end it's all a form of study and artistry. It's equivalent.

I think of the creation of artwork as essentially a form of roleplay... it takes the same place in my mind that LARPing animals did as a child. Whether it is my child body crawling around on the floor pretending to dig a den... or my adult body illustrating an aardvark peeing on a fox... it's the exact same level of 'weird' and 'wrong'. I learn about knotting to improve my immersive playtimes with my beanie babies, I learn about urethra placement on an African Civet to improve my immersive arttimes. The reality of reading books and sifting through papers and photography is just such a dorky and placid activity??? I'm going to sit here and spend like 2 hours collaging photos of African plants, and environments, and animals... I'm going to painstakingly write down height/length measurements and resize references in relation to one another... I'm gonna have those things open on my phone next to me while I draw... I'll go hrmrmmrmm noo this muzzle shape isn't right for a cape fox, hrmrmmrm scroll scroll where was that profile shot I saved... scroll scroll..scribble.... OK markings... OK, I like these more creamsicle colored individuals rather than the more gray toned, hmm how to distill these markings... scribble scribble... zooms in on photo... ok, so there are dark eyeliner markings beside the eyes... and the white covers the entire leg about to the elbow, yes yes... alright, what are species of hare... scroll scroll... oooh tolai hare.... !!! haven't heard of that... save save save...

... this process is honestly a lot of fun for me, stimulating, I get to engage in my PEDANTIC obsession with informations and try to tastefully apply it to a sexy concept ... NO 'FEELING WEIRD' crosses my MIND... and it seems like a very very very very very recent concept among furries to dwell on this ?!?!?

Amusingly I have more concerns about copying specific architecture too closely or 'stealing' composition/colors from landscape photography and stuff... sometimes I worry if I take too much from any one photo of a glade, I'm robbing the photographer of their genius shot composition, I'm taking credit for something not mine... and I try to challenge myself to bash together more references and not pull too hard from any 1 photographer's work (though in my early practice, I leaned more on any individual photo)... I am never personally 1:1 recreating any photo of an animal, since my own artistic goal is stylization and simplification... I want to stare at so many photos and videos of animals that I have a tiny rotating model of it in my brain I can pose a billion ways... it becomes my brain-toy. How on earth do I develop that without references !??! but also... why would I ?????!??!??!?!? I love nature and I WANT to draw inspiration from it.... I don't want o draw off of... human cultural impressions of a fox, or play telephone with what furries think of as a fox, I want to understand the fox directly... it's be so much more shameful and disrespectful to nature to me PERSONALLY to be watering down the concept of a jackal to whatever other furries have distilled it to... let mediocre warrior cats fanart determine how I stylize cats... truly this is spiritually disgusting to me...