Might I advise joining ArtFight this year in July? Seems like a good way to get involved with the furry art community. Shame you missed Scaly Daily earlier this month.

Hmm that might be a good idea actually! Thank you. I'll keep it in mind.

I'll admit I didn't even know about Scaly Daily but it does sound like I missed out.

It was just a two week challenge by an artist with each day featuring a prompt relating to the ocean or ocean fantasy. I made a folder of my works for it if you want to see what the vibe was about.

There's also Smaugust and Weretober this year as well for other art activities.

For me I end up typically joining artists servers. Unfortunately those are sometimes only accessibly via Patreon. But I have had luck in joining them and meeting folks I tend to get along with (usually because we share a common interest because of said artist). It can also be difficult joining an already established community as a newbie since you sort of need to put yourself out there if you wanna do anything more than lurk.

There is also whatever local city/state furry chat that is in your area. These can be Discord servers or Telegram chats. They can be pretty hit or miss though with the people in them as I've discovered.