This image was originally done as a black and white illustration for a book of short stories about a very precocious basset hound. In this story, the dog makes friends with a duck, and they would often fall asleep snuggled together. I thought that my drawing of them turned out very sweet, and after turning in the finished illustration, decided that I wanted to do a watercolor version based on my pencil sketch. Here is my pencil drawing:
This is the vector line art of this image that was printed in the book:
I did three versions of the watercolor version, trying to get the gradient of the sky and the shadows on the dog and on the ground to look right. I used some masking fluid create the moon and stars. This third attempt felt pretty good, and I’m pleased with the result.
Tag: hound
Playful basset hound
This playful basset hound illustration was finished a couple of months ago and comes from a desire to draw an image with a bit of action in it. I love basset hounds, partly because they have a very funny look to them with their long, floppy ears, long bodies and short legs, and because their faces with all the wrinkles provide great expression. Once I had settled on the image of a basset hound running, I wanted to try to tell a little story with the image, so I needed a reason for him to be running. My parents’ dog, Dixie Belle, loves to play keep-away with objects she finds, so I decided that this dog was playing keep-away as well. A ribbon provided a nice visual element to emphasize the action and movement of the image. Here is my final pencil sketch:
Once I had inked this image and done a bit of Google research on the specifics of basset hound coloration, I used a little wet-on-wet technique to blend some gray into the various brown spots. I’m still experimenting with how best to do this, but I like the results this time around. Here are my inks for this image (you’ll notice that I changed the position of the left eye in the final image using photoshop to make him look less googly-eyed):
