After completing the Cat Alphabet, the very first question I got was from dog lovers. When will you be working on the dog version? Over the past few months I set about fulfilling their wish. Here is a look at creating the Dog Alphabet. (Or maybe it is an Arfabet?)
I first brushed up on my study of dogs by observing them at every opportunity. Sizes, shapes, moods, gestures, and colors were just some of the things I was studying as I watched them walk, run, and play. It was a fun assignment.
From there I got out paper and pencil and, as with the Cat Alphabet, started drawing letters and animals. This time around it was dogs. Lots of dogs, big and small, of many breeds. I decided that the dogs would be a bit more rowdy and playful than the more relaxed cats. I also gave myself the constraint of working with lower case letters this time around. With less area to work with, that dictated that the dogs would be outside of the letters.
I made a few different versions of a few letters and gave choices to some trusted critics. I also got suggestions for slight improvements to a couple of drawings.
The drawings were all scanned then cleaned up to get rid of unnecessary lines. I made a preliminary black and white layout of the full dog alphabet set, then a version with the rainbow of colored, textured letters.
I saved the coloring and shading of all the dogs until last. Each dog has three or more colors blended for depth and highlights.
The final step is the arrangement and layout of the full alphabet. Using the previous rough versions as guides, I placed the colored, full-size versions into a high-resolution file suitable for poster printing.
Dog lovers can now get the Dog Alphabet artwork on posters, t-shirts, blank cards, and mugs of all shapes and sizes at the grotkeart store at zazzle. They make great gifts for pet lovers, your trusted vet, a teacher’s classroom, someone at an animal rescue, or yourself.