A Good Nose Isn’t That Hard to Find

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This series of illustrations is my most recent work for BuzzHootRoar—a team of scientists that run a “graphics-driven blog that shares and explains a scientific concept in 300 words or less—where I am the Artist in Residence. My illustrations accompany an article titled A Good Nose Isn’t That Hard to Find. The article, written by author and dog expert Cat Warren, is about working dogs, and how scientists have tried (and failed) over the years to find an animal or machine that can perform better than a working dog. You can see the series in context and read the article over on BuzzHootRoar! Here are some of the illustrations:

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And now for some process work! I began by drawing lots of dogs. ALL the dogs. Even a dog thinking about a banana (I don’t know?)

 

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Then I moved on to redrawing some the concepts I liked for the series.

 

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Then I made some color studies in Photoshop to plan out my color palette. This was the study I ended up liking best!

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And then I made the final art! This one was a bonus illustration that appeared at the end of the article with our bios. All the other dogs in the series are based on German Shepherds or other working dog breeds, but I couldn’t resist including my own dog, Oni!

 

BHR-a-good-nose-products-1-blogAnd since you guys requested it last time, I went ahead and made some dog art products and put them up in my Society6 shop! I really like this color combination, and I think these turned out pretty well. You can check out the pieces here!

 

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And this post is all about dogs, so you know I have to include some photos of my favorite dogs! My dog, Oni, is the one on the top left, and the dog leaning next to him is his (real!) brother, Kee’an. Our friends own Kee’an and also Blaze at the bottom.

 

BHR-a-good-nose-dogs-3-blogAnd this is Oni and another friend’s dog, Zuko, trying to tempt me away from work!

Yay, dogs! Thanks for reading!

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