yessiree! Artist here, so first of all, thank you for considering commissioning an artist! That's always nice to see. Anyway, here's my 2 cents on what I look for from commissioners, and what you should be looking for from artists:

Short version:

Know roughly what you want, find an artist in your budget who's open to commissions (and who has an art style you think will fit), then give them the references they need to draw your fursona.

The best places to find artists are Furaffinity, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Tumblr. There's also iitaku and e621 if you're OK with NSFW.

Long-winded, ADHD-took-over, rambly and run-on-sentences version:

First of all, you should have at least a vague idea of what you're looking for. Here, in the case of "a first image for a fursona", do you want an illustration of your sona doing something, or do you want a reference sheet? Personally, since it's the first image of your fursona, I would recommend going for a ref sheet; this will facilitate future drawings (also not all artists will want to do the design work of drawing a character basically from scratch).

Once you've decided that, it will be easier to look for artists. Ideally, you want to find an artist that has a track record of drawing something similar to what you want; for example, if your fursona is fat, you might might want to look for artists know for having drawn fat characters. If your fursona is a bird, you might want to look for artists who have drawn birds before. That kinda thing.

As to where to look for artists, you have many choices; deviantArt used to be The place, but nowadays it would mostly be Furaffinity and Bluesky (with some on Mastodon and Tumblr). You can also browse art pieces by tags on e926, the SFW version of e621; the tag for ref sheets is "model_sheet". Though if you're OK with NSFW, then iitaku (and of course e621) are also very good places to look; on that note, SFW artists will not always do NSFW art, but NSFW artists will usually accept to do both (I know I do). Artists will (generally) advertise if they're open for commissions in their bio, pinned post, or directly in their handle. If you're unsure, you can just DM them to ask! Most artists also advertise their prices, so you can filter out the ones that would be out of your budget.

And finally, once you've found an artist that you want to commission, they will need references. Is your fursona a great plains coyote? Or perhaps a hybrid between a red fox and a gold-crested mackerel? In that case, you should pick photos or art pieces of the elements that you want the artist to incorporate in the art piece. Written descriptions can also work in a pinch. If you're a bit unsure about the design of your fursona, don't hesitate to let the artist know beforehand, so you two can exchange early on design decisions. Finally, if you're going for an illustration instead of a ref sheet, the artist will love you if you give them a crude sketch of what pose you have in mind. Literally open MS Paint and put down what you want the artist to draw, as simple as possible. Go full stickman. It will look like the art of a 5-years old who's picked up a crayon for the first time and believe me, that artist will hang it on the family fridge all the same.

Mind, I said a lot of "you should" and whatnot, but all of this is just so you can be as prepared as possible. If you don't know what you want for some elements in there, that's also OK and something you should discuss with the artist. Also, don't hesitate to let them know that it's your first time commissioning; when I have first-time commissioners, I usually ask them that, that way I know how much of the process I need to explain.

And that about covers most of it, I think! I understand if this was A Lot, but hopefully this helps you, and please don't hesitate to ask questions!

Actually nevermind, I came across exactly what you're looking for just a minute ago:

http://www.matrices.net/tutorials.htm

there's notably an article on padding there, so hopefully this should answer some of your questions.

Hmmm, I don't have any tip to share for this kind of detail in particular, but, if you haven't already, I'd recommend cross-posting this to more general craft communities, like [email protected] for example. They might be able to help more

I imagine it's in reference to a recent-ish trend in Spanish speaking countries (or maybe just one? idr). IIRC it started with just a picture of a guy smoking and captioned "oh, this is art", and fast-forward to now where it's been reduced to just the cigarette, and the more cigarettes there are, the more artistic it is. doesn't even need to be about movies anymore either, can just be about anything, that's how memetic it became.

no that's

That's not the translation. That's the artist's caption.

the translation is closer to something like "fuuuck... this is cinema"

Pretty much! They both use the same database, but e926 automatically applies a safe filter on the search results.

It's exactly the same as browsing e621 with "rating:safe" in the search prompt.

love SLARPG, every RPG fan should try it, it's so good

stonehenge....

oh well that's unusual. I do not recognize a single of those (the only one I thought I recognized, I got wrong)

neat though

ruridragon! I love it, it's really good

been following it since the first chapter went around (it did numbers on tumblr, unsurprisingly), and I really like where it's going