My mom asked me to draw her dog for a phone case. I’ve already drawn a dog, but really, I drew my dog, because if I’m going to draw a dog, why wouldn’t I draw my own?

Other than the obvious canine features, my mom’s dog looks nothing like mine. Her dog looks like this:

He’s a purebred golden retriever that my parents rescued from the pound who got him from a raided puppy mill. They figure he’s about five to six years old and he spent his whole life in a cage, because people are horrible. But, his story has a happy ending. He went from a cage to a lake with a yard and a boat (pictured), and my parents who love him to death. Lucky dog.

My mom wanted a new phone case for her new phone, but being picky, she wanted her dog, not mine, so today, I’m going to draw a golden retriever. This is her Christmas present. Who knew that, as an adult, I’d still be giving my mom homemade presents like I did as a kid? At least this is more practical than a macaroni necklace.

As usual, I start with the largest part of the animal first. It could almost be his feet since they are enormous, but it’s his body.

Since I’m primarily drawing this for a phone case, I’m going to draw him vertically, so he’s sitting. Look at me, all planning ahead and shit.

Now for some legs. I drew a slapdash hind leg, which needed work. Then I remembered that I’ve already drawn a dog leg, so I stole my dog’s leg and copied it in there.

I forgot to take a screen shot of drawing the front legs, but you get the idea. I drew one, then copied it and put it behind the body for the other. I need to futz with the hind leg a little, so it fits on my mom’s dog.

Perfect. I took a right leg and turned it into a left leg. I’m so clever.  Now for the toes…

You may have noticed that those toes are orange. That’s because I stole them from my tiger:

I left the tiger claws on the tiger though. This isn’t that kind of dog.

We have a perfectly good dog body. Excellent. Now for a head.

Hmm. He looks more like a duck or a platypus than a dog at the moment. Let’s keep going.

Draw one half then copy, paste, flip. He looks a little dinosaury.

I filled in the mouth and gave him a nose. Now he looks like a surprised dinosaur. Oh my!

And a tongue. He’s definitely looking more dog-like.

And some eyes. Yup. That’s definitely a dog. He’s still missing some trademarked golden retriever floppy ears.

Perfect! That’s a dopey/happy golden head if I’ve ever seen one. Put it on the body and see how he looks.

Aww. That’s cute and I think it captures the essence of my mom’s dog since he is always smiling.

He needs a tail. And guess what? Theft again! I stole his tail from my wolf.

Since this dog is sitting, I think I’ll have it sweep around his front.

 

Better. To make him furry, I’m going to have to draw all sorts of essentially less than and greater than signs all over him.

And there we have our wolf/tiger/golden retriever. He’s looking pretty fuzzy.

Once again, I forgot to take a screenshot before I added the color. I’m not very good at remembering to screenshot between steps.

Originally, I left the wolf shading on the tail and I was going to shade the rest, but after drawing all those squiggles, I lazied out and decided to do him uni-color. Since he’s very cartoonish, I think he looks fine without shading.

I asked my mom what color she wanted as a background and she said blue (because he’s a boy dog–very creative, mom), so here he is:

You can buy your own here.

Doing this got me thinking that perhaps I should do a whole bunch of different breeds since there are a lot of different dogs in the world and only one of mine. What dog breeds do you think I should draw?