Part of the reason it's hard to be an NSFW furry artist is because it's hard to look up references. When I try, all I can seem to find find are things that involve either dissection or pure evil.

How does anyone else know what the heck a given animal character's bits would look like? Surely there's got to be sources out there that only present the facts? Like scientific diagrams or something?

lendrimujina said:
Surely there's got to be sources out there that only present the facts? Like scientific diagrams or something?

Yeah you're gonna have to pay some $$$ and dig through research libraries. Be prepared to be called a zoophile if you're publicly that interested. Safer to just make shit up; 99% of furries have no idea what they're talking about, and you'll probably have more positive attention getting things wrong than right.^{Particularly when you factor getting things too correct is gonna creep people out or just not be visually appealing.}

Best bet is find a reference from a furry that knows the shit somehow without them being fucking weird about it. Pretty sure everyone by now knows what a dog or horse cock look like without getting stuff that'll make people call the feds. The problem is avoiding Zoophiles since they're getting more and more bold and blatant hiding in the furry community nowadays, there's even Zoophile flags that have been allowed here even though they technically promote irl beastiality. >.>

Anyways, find a not-creepy furry to reference the bits from. Preferably someone who knows what they look like because frankly furries still make the mistake of not knowing where to put the urethra on a dog furry's dick.

this is why humanoid penis is such a popular tag

Claim you're trying to figure out if yours or your friends animals are healthy or not, or looking into animal husbandry to breed more of those species. Might not work if you're looking up multiples of exotic species, unless you're a veterinarian.

I've always been under the impression that RL-questionable things people draw are either made up or reference existing artworks.

At your own risk, you could Google Image search it or search for videos on YouTube of the animals mating. However, unless you want hyper-realistic junk (which I think would make more sense for highly detailed artstyles like anchee's, which does not seem to be what you're going for), realism doesn't matter. Furries have always taken creative liberties with how animal junk looks. Even the artist that draw fairly realistic ferals frequently take some amount of creative liberties when it comes to the genitals. Not to mention, you seem to draw anthros, so any expectations of realism is thrown completely out the window, since anthros aren't real. Just copy what other artists are doing.

When I look for references, I tend to look at other artists' artwork and get a general sense of what it looks like. If I really wanted to be accurate, I would look toward scientific anatomy articles.

Unfortunately, a lot of scientific articles you find will not display plain references for animal genitalia since it is plain unnecessary, mostly they will feature some sort of cross-section/dissection or deformity/infection. Googling for references can also be highly risky since you may end up with IRL bestiality content or other questionable things.

Your best bet is to find other furry artists who draw realistic animal genitalia and copy from them.
Alternatively, referencing from animal mating/breeding videos or documentaries are also fully acceptable.
If someone calls you a zoophile for watching Animal Planet or animal husbandry videos, tell them to grow the fuck up.

crocogator said: realism doesn't matter. Furries have always taken creative liberties with how animal junk looks.

zepto made a pretty funny edit of one of her comics that also put the situation with "anatomical accuracy" pretty succinctly: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/30159961/