[Extra] Camping Floof [HQ] (Patreon)

When we worked on this project, I was confident that Kyropracter's (not so) evil plan was to turn me into a full-time furry artist. In a sense, his vision of anthro characters that aren't so feral allowed me to explore the theme further and fall in love with it. I was researching a lot, so much that today I feel at home at FA. More than that, I understand how powerful furry characters can be when conveying stories and feelings. It just clicks when you start to paint them. Maybe something tactile about their textures, fur, scales, etc. Maybe something fragile and rare that shines through their personalities (reading Sweet Tooth helped me with that on the SFW side of life). These are new characters, women that are half fawn, squirrel, jaguar, and skunk, and they look so lovely together! I love it when friends feel comfortable enough to share their most private moments. There's something magical about it.

I remember well how intense this month was when it came to painting. After experimenting with color sketches the month before, I was confident that adding color from the start would be a better strategy than working layer by layer, painting shapes, values, colors, and edges, the old masters' approach. It's possible to achieve some beautiful, painterly results this way, but a painting's complexity escalates and quickly gets out of control, making simple adjustments very time-consuming. In traditional painting, it's routine to make color studies to grasp the interplay of colors before committing to the final project. Still, color studies are so simple in design that they don't convey much of the drawing. They defeat the purpose of sketches as being fresh renderings of an idea that are both descriptive and evocative. After all, choosing a favorite one is our goal at this stage. What did I learn from all this? A lot, I must say. =^___^=

Fun fact: we don't have s'mores here in Brazil (or: if we do, everyone else concealed it from me. Damn you, compatriots!), so I had to make some. Chocolate is easy to find, but we don't have graham crackers or marshmallows over here (I had to buy marshmallows on Amazon, and my pursuit for graham crackers was hopeless, so I had to improvise with a different sort of cracker). I even burned my lower lip trying to get the marshmallow adequately melted, making me feel pretty stupid. It was a mess, and I'm sure I have no idea how s'mores are supposed to taste to this day. T____T LOL

Well, without further ado, I present to you Camping Floof. Special thanks to Kyro, who kindly shared his vision of healthy friendships, good times, and nutritious snacks. =^___^=

Enjoy!

Q.

p.s.: this is an extra painting, an early access submission. I'll post it on my social media in the future. Since this was a commission painting, I won't publish its RIF file.