Illustrated Dogs!

I’ve Illustrated many Dogs in my time. I’ll share a few of them in this post. To start, Let’s go back to my days on staff at The Wall Street Journal. Aside from lots of portraits, the paper often called for illustrations of animals of all kinds, as well as insects and botanical items! Here is a very early drawing of mine that appeared in the paper in my first year on the job:

A little later on, when I had established the pointillistic WSJ “style”, I created a ‘hedcut’-type of portrait of a Sharpei…

Back in the early-eighties, there was, apparently, a craze involving these wrinkly canines. So much so that WSJ dedicated a story to them. If I’recall, this fellow appeared on Page One.

Now, a little before my time at the Journal, I created this design for a start-up recording studio…

…Not exactly “His Master’s Voice”. Note the linear style I was using at the time. Just a few dots and no more! Next, an image I produced for The Reader’s Digest…

RD had a collectible series called “First Day of Issue”. They would hire artists like me to illustrate envelopes that would contain a new stamp and postmark dated on the first day of that stamp’s issue by the USPS. Thy evidently had a sizable number of subscribers. I created a lot of these illustrations for this series. This drawing of an arctic explorer with his trustworthy companion was interesting in that I learned a lot about drawing fur!

Next, we jump forward to my freelance career days. A client hired me to create this dynamic image of a running Spaniel:

As I recall, the client did not like this drawing. Some folks you just can’t please! Coming up to the present, I recently finished this portrait of a neighbor’s dog, named Charlie. Charlie had recently passed, so this was a memorial portrait…

Before Charlie passed away, he got to meet my present dog, a Jack Russell Terrier. My wife placed the then young puppy on her ‘big brother’s’ back. She brought some life into the old Retriever, as his bushy tail waved briskly back and forth! Here is a portrait of the young pup, whose name is Birch…