Oh that sweet face, flying ears and wagging tail. Jake ready to leap into play. He rests, waits, minds his own business. Then, something in the air, maybe me with a look in my eye, starts to get to him, gets him roiled. Jake could sit, longer than you would think a dog could, letting himself fill up with wildness. You could see boisterous waves rising up slowly inside him. When he got full to bursting he'd let out a bark, a deep, solitary thing. Eyebrows twitching, he'd beg you to egg him on. With a sharp eye, or a sudden movement, or your own deep bark, he'd break loose. A large and quiet dog, known for his restfulness, charging after you all around the house, up and back down the stairs, legs flying scrambling for a grip on the tiles at the bottom. Better yet, you'd take it outside, Jake chasing behind you all around the out building, then you'd turn the tide chasing him all around the building, a cacophony of barking and laughing and hard breathing would ensue. This is Jake, just before a bit of fun.
I caught this Jake drawing from the sculpture of him as a three legged dog. Jake himself maintained all four legs. Woody, Matt Wilson's dog, lost a back leg in a car accident. The three legged dog sculpture lost its front leg in a kiln accident. It blew off, nicely though, with a fine shape. The rest of the figure was quite what dogs are like so I kept it, in honor of Woody and all the other three legged dogs who live good lives with a hop.
When I started drawing the sculpture, I, of course, could not actually make my hand put the parts where they belonged, so I had to replace them a few times. I learned these multiple tracings gave him a sense of action the sculpture couldn't have. I used those lines in Dog I, catching Jake as he bends his head toward his flopped over leg.
This series, What Dogs Are Like, was done in soft pencil on paper. When readying it for the web I played with an inversion of the slide. Liking the chalk board drawing that materialized, I have convinced myself that it lives in the world on a piece of chalk board somewhere in the cabinet.
