Is Derpibooru just not the place for mediocre artists? (Concerns both SFW and NSFW art)

I’ve been interested in drawing what I like for many years now and the one thing that’s been holding me back is that I’m always too focused on playing video games and talking with my friends.
 
Ever since I got into MLP and became a brony back in May 2011, I’ve always wanted to leave my mark in the fandom and Derpibooru seems to be the go-to place for sharing MLP-related fanart. Four years later, and my art is still the same as it looked even before I became a brony. And when I do decide to dedicate my time into making a new drawing, I am greeted with downvotes and little to no comments. The most I would get out of my art from here are upvotes and comments from friends and that’s it.  
I’m obviously much better at being a passionate fan than a fanartist but it when it comes to expressing my ideas that I would love to see get drawn, it feels like a luxury that I can never afford.
 
I’ve been planning for a long time about wanting to make NSFW art that I’ve always wanted to see get drawn, but I have the fear that it will still get frowned upon by almost the entire website. Why? Because a lot of my NSFW ideas happen to be fetish related. And even though I’ve been more open with my fetishes lately, my possible NSFW pics might get even more downvotes and shunning than my SFW pics because they happen to be fetishes that almost everyone on here despises. For those who are wondering, my fetishes happen to be the fart and scat fetishes along with some unique personal kinks of mine.  
Now I would LOVE to see someone else draw these NSFW ideas for me but almost everyone on here and other brony artists outside of Derpibooru either want me to pay large amounts of cash or they are not interested in the same art ideas that I would love to see get drawn. So in the end, I have to be the guinea pig and make these pics happen.
 
A good friend of mine told me that if I don’t want the fear of getting flooded with downvotes, I should just stick with DeviantART, Furaffinity and Inkbunny. But even if I do just post them outside of Derpibooru, I hardly get any attention and/or feedback. It feels like a complete lose-lose situation.  
The main reason why I want to draw at least decently is to please myself and others who also share the same ideas and desires. But I always feel like I am the only person on the internet who wants to see these ideas happen.
 
So what should I do? Should I keep my future artwork off Derpibooru or should I go ahead and draw what I desire and share it with the rest of Derpibooru regardless of what kind of reactions I’ll get? Also if anyone is feeling the same way as I am, feel free to share it with me.

@Red-Supernova  
Oh hey you became a brony right around the same time I did. I felt the same way as well. And I was greeted with the same. If you don’t believe me, you can check my artist tag (SoulDewLatios)
 
My work on Derpibooru is, obviously over a year old. Here’s an example of my work over a year ago:  
 
And here’s an example of my art now:  

 
Most of my fetish stuff is hind hoof fetish art. Admittedly it’s a much more accepted fetish than yours, but I’m sure it can be drawn well. Due to the fact of worrying about upvotes or downvotes, downvotes are going to be unavoidable if you focus on your fetish.
 
Here’s what I would say:  
Don’t post your art here. Post it on another site and wait a bit. Maybe promote your work elsewhere. If you want my recommendation I’d say get a tumblr. I decided to stop posting my art here and went and made an ask blog on tumblr for my OC pony. I now have over 100 followers (I had no idea my little mare would that popular) but I’ve been getting a lot better than I ever thought I would.

@Latios381  
That’s awesome to hear. Yeah, I’ve been in the fandom’s shadows since the early days.
 
Hmm…your art looks nice! :)  
Maybe I should focus on one of my kinks that may be unique to me before I get deep into the fetishes.
 
I’ve made a tumblr a few months ago and the idea for an ask blog for my OC pony is not far off. But I have no idea on how to organize it to look like others’ ask blogs and it hurts my motivation more.

@Red-Supernova  
First things first, get Redux theme on tumblr (just google search Tumblr Redux). The Redux theme is the most simplistic, and it’s also what most other blogs have. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out from there.

Derpibooru is a neutral archive of pony art of all stripes, quality and subject matter. That’s all it’s ever been. To suggest anything else is to do disservice to the site’s mission.

Ugh, I may not like your fetishes but I respect you as an individual. Indeed Derpibooru users can be harsh on artists over quality. Actual content sometimes, sometimes not taken into account.
 
That said, it has actually been helpful to me in some way. I got the resolve not to draw poor/mediocre stuff myself from getting some of my older work mass down voted.
 
Here’s one “Try it again” example:
 
Last year…  

 
And now the current WIP:  

 
Still needs some work but I think it is safe to say the trial by fire has steered my drawing evolution some.
 
I do pay/commission the pros to draw stuff for me occasionally too. Ironically my limited use of their talent is not as much due to shortage of funds, but slow or lacking feedback communication from their end just as often or more often.
 
For example I wanted a Celestia with human female erotic scene originally to be done by a professional. But after two NSFW artist prospects I would have really wanted to do it for me failed to respond I tried drawing it myself and it was a disaster.
 
But it had a good side of making me determined to draw better.
 
TLDR summary: yes quality counts around here very much. NSFW and regular art.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
The site itself and admin are.
 
The regular users themselves are another subject, being individuals who can go in any critical direction they choose. Some are nice, many are crude. Just like the real world I suppose.

@ArkyNoid  
Fortunately, though, they don’t run the site, and Rule #0 protects amateur artists from being dumped on for no reason. If you like to draw, even if it’s not pro-level, I salute you. Expressing yourself creatively is something positive, and I only wish I had received positive reinforcement when I was a new artist back in the 1990s.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
Haha yep. I like to draw now. Thanks I salute you too.

Alright, since nopony seems to be doing it, then I guess I’ll give you some of the art advice you need. Now don’t take this as gospel, because I’m still a novice artist.
 
You can see my art here: link
 
Before we begin, there’s some things I want to mention.
 
I recommend you do the drawing tutorials at Draw A Box, it takes you from the basics of drawing all the way up to the human figure. Just click the following link and go to the lessons tab: link
 
I recommend you get some kind of drawing tablet if you haven’t already. It is impossible to do any kind of good art with a mouse, you need to be able to use the full motion of your wrist, arm, and shoulder while drawing and a mouse just constrains you to using your wrist.
 
A lot of artist recommend the intuous link
 
I however use a Microsoft surface pro 3 link because I can’t use tablets. I need to be able to look down at what I’m drawing like a pen and paper.
 
The kind of tablet you get really depends upon what is comfortable for you. And if you’re underage or can’t afford a tablet, save your money and get one. I swear to Luna your art will improve 10-fold once you get a tablet.
 
ok, moving on to your art.
 
First and foremost, your anatomy needs a lot of improvement.
 
When it comes to drawing anything,be it ponies, humans, animals, or any organic figure, you need to start by drawing a circle with a cross hair or some kind of shape and crosshair to build from. It should look something like this: link
 
The reason for this is because the circle you draw if for the character’s head. The size of the circle determines the size of the head, and later the sizer of the entire character, and the cross hairs help you determine what direction the character is facing and where all their facial features will go.
 
you can see from this tutorial different mlp heads in different directions with facial features drawn from a circle with a cross hair link
 
When it comes to drawing human anatomy, there is this thing called “7 and a half heads” which basically means an adult human is 7 and a half heads tall. So if you want to draw a human you’d take the circle you just drew for the head and take 7 and a half of those to get your height.
 
This picture shows head measurements for humans of different ages: link
 
When it comes to pony, they are 3 heads tall. So you’d take the circle you drew for your pony head and take 3 of those to get your height.
 
You can see what I mean from this picture: link
 
Now here comes the tricky part. I;m still having issues figuring it out so bear with me.
 
You can see from the last picture that a pony’s body is made of circles too. The tricky part is that even though the torso section is a head tall, the body circle can be anywhere from 1/2 of a head to 2/3 of a head, depending one your style. MLP’s show style is typically 2/3 heads tall to give that chubby torso while 1/2 will make it look tall and lanky like the above picture. Also depending on your style, the back circle should be slightly taller than the front circle in the torso, and can be either overlapping with the front circle or spaced a bit from it. Show style has them overlapping, but you don’t have to if you want to draw in a different style.
 
Hooves are probably the trickiest part. Hooves and muzzles are what I have the hardest time with because they have this nice easy line then it has this sudden sharp curve. Your instinct it to draw a sharp point but you need to train yourself to do an organic curve. That’s there the first lesson in draw a box comes in. It will help you get used to using your whole arm while drawing. But back to hooves.
 
What I know about hooves is you draw these almost skeletal like lines where you want your hooves to go. They are basically there to show you where the joints are on the hooves, the areas where it bends, so you can know how to draw your curves for the hooves.
 
You can see these links for a visual
 
link link link
 
I can’t say much beyond that, because I myself am still learning.
 
Now, onto facial features.
 
Going back to this image link and back to the circle and cross hair.
 
Like I said before, the cross hair helps you determine where all your facial features are going to go. Notice how in cell 2-1 the muzzle is at the dead center of the cross hair and the lips are below it for a frontal view. The eyes are spaced off to the sides from the middle point (and depending on your style will lie somewhere between the middle or bottom of the eye). The ears wrap around the head and usually converge on the horizontal line.
 
One thing you’ll need to practice is drawing the facial features and head at different angles. It’s kinda difficult because you’re treating 2-dimensional space as a 3-dimensional object, but it’s all about practice.
 
As for manes, a good rule of thumb is to draw the mane as one continuous line behind their ear/ If you look at this pictures and follow the lines for their mane, they seem to continue behind their ear.
 
link
 
 
That should give you enough to start with. I’m not going to go into coloring, shading, perspective, or anything like that yet because you need to practice the basics. Also too because I’m getting tired and this is already a lot of information for you to process.
 
Basically just take all the information I gave you, watch some speed paints and sketches on youtube, and practice practice practice!
 
Hope this helps.

@Latios381  
Thank you! This really helps a lot!
 
@ArkyNoid  
Thank you for at least respecting what I like and your Octavia pics look good.
 
And the problem with trying to hire other artists to draw my ideas is not so much that I don’t have the cash, but more of my parents’ concern. Yes, I actually ask my parents for this kind of stuff (Don’t ask why, its just how I take judgement for things.) and they have denied me permission to pay others for drawing. Not because I’m asking for porn, they’re quite fine with it to be honest, but more of the fact that I’m sharing my credit card information with strangers and the possibility that they’ll just rip me off.
 
@ArkyNoid  
This is why I rarely downvote pics. Sure, there are a lot of fetishes I don’t care for but I’m nice enough to leave them be and let others enjoy them.
 
@Rainb0wDashie  
Ok. Your stuff looks nice.
 
YIKES. I don’t think I have the patience to sit through a drawing class. I did take a drawing class years ago about that sort of stuff but it never stuck with me. But I do understand that all drawings require shapes.
 
I also had a drawing tablet but it was hard for me to get the stylus to move the way I wanted to. I can’t decide if I was using the stylus the wrong way the whole time or that I needed to learn how to master the stylus.  
And then there’s the fear that when I make the effort to buy a new tablet after paying something hundred dollars, I won’t get the interest to use it. The fact that I don’t know how to use a tablet makes me very upset inside.  
I’ve actually just tried to re-install the old tablet that I bought years ago just by reading your reply and I found that I’m missing the cord that plugs my tablet to my computer. So for now, I still have to use my mouse to re-trace my drawings, color them in, and polish them up.
 
I knew about the circles with crosshairs long ago and I always use it whenever I start up a new drawing. I’ll still download that head tutorial because I can always use more drawing guides.  
I somewhat knew about ponies’ bodies being made of circles, I just didn’t know how big the circles were that I needed to draw. And considering that I want to draw sexy pony pics, if I want to give the pony a nice butt, then I need to draw a big sizable circle.
 
You got that fact right about hooves being tricky. But for me, everything is tricky.  
And I just saved those tutorials as well.
 
Thank you very much for taking your time to help me. I’m gonna save your reply as a document so I can re-read it for help later.

@Red-Supernova
 
There are a number of pro artists I wouldn’t expect to rip you off who use Patreon or PayPal. Though many do NSFW, it may be trickier for your particular fetishes. Not impossible though.
 
But if you gain adequate skills of course you can create anything, as you already know. I believe in your ability.

@Nightweaver20xx  

Pretty much this.

I posted a lot of art there when I was first beginning, and while it never got a bunch of upvotes, it did motivate me to improve. That said, it might discourage anyone else, I don’t know what motivates you. It’s not the best place to start out.
 
As has been said already, tumblr can be a much more welcoming place. I got a lot of support there even when my art was really terrible(not saying it’s that good now, but better.) There will be people who hate on stuff anywhere, but tumblr is pretty good.
 
dA isn’t horrible either, but don’t expect a bunch of feedback. I still get hardly any and I’ve gained a decent amount of watchers there.
 
It all just depends on whether you can take bad feedback along with the good.

@ArkyNoid  
You sure? Is there a way I can confirm that with them that they won’t rip me off?
 
Thanks. :) Be sure to keep an eye for my stuff sometime.
 
@luna the great!  
I can take bad feedback if its written reasonably. But some comments like “This looks like a ten year old drew this!” are just uncalled for.
 
If tumblr really is the best place to start, then I can think about starting up my OC pony’s ask blog.

@Red-Supernova
 
I think the best way to mostly insure that they won’t rip you off is to just go with an established artist. There are plenty reputable ones even with work appearing here on derpibooru. Typically these will be high quality works, will have hundreds of upvotes/favorites, and links to the original source will probably lead you to Deviant Art, Patreon, or another relatively mainstream source page.
 
Can’t say there is an absolute sure fire way to confirm that this won’t lead to being cheated but there definitely are artists you can likely be 99.9% sure won’t intentionally rip you off (if they agree to your project).