Coloring Book Mock Up

Over the weekend I printed and put together a mock up for a coloring book. This isn't the paper I am going to actually print the pages on, and the cover paper is not what I will use - this was just see how the images and text work out when printed. As a test, I had an 8 year old girl color a page for me and asked her what she thought of the coloring book. Her only comment was that the story was 'too sad'. 

This morning I printed out two of my Pit Bull drawings with the thought to experiment with watercolor and in hope that it would possibly spark an idea. I did the watercolor to one of the images but I stopped after a little while because I did not like the look... and I ended up smearing some of it across the image.

An idea that did come up when I first printed out the drawings was the possibility of putting the images into a coloring book. The idea behind the coloring book could be a way of teaching children the responsibility of owning a pet. Maybe giving each dog an identity and a little story to go along with each of them would help with making a connection to the kids. I could possibly even move it towards being an activity book and including crosswords with focuses on responsibility. 

Victims of Michael Vick's Case

Here is a show on PBS called Need To Know. This is a segment "The Dogs Are Alright" is about what has happened with the dogs involved in the Michael Vick case. Fast forward to 35:11.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1757686316

Working on a growling Dachshund. I came across an article that was about a dog magazine interviewing 6,000 dog owners asking about their dog and any possibly biting habits and if they've ever been bit by their own dog. Out of the 6,000 interviewed people, the most common dog breed for having bit someone was the Dachshund.

Working on images for my abuse poster series. 

Book Introductions

I am currently working on the text for the book introductions. The following is for the introduction to the Breedism book.

Never trust a dog not to fight. This doesn't just exist for dogs that fall under the "bully breeds", this goes for all dog breeds. just like with a human being, you never know how someone or an animal will react under certain conditions. Do you know the signs your dog gives when they feel threatened? No matter the size of the dog, at certain times they may feel threatened and it is never certain exactly how they will react.

Pit Bull Rescue Central (www.pbrc.net) has endless amounts of resoures when it comes to learning all about the breeds, and educational sources. Their vision is: a compassionate world where pit bulls and pit bull mixes reside in responsible, loving homes and where their honor and positive image is restored and preserved. On their website they include a test with 18 images of different dogs, and asks the viewer to identify any dog they believe is a pit bull. out of the 18 dogs pictured, there is only one actual Pit Bull. When I conducted this test of my own several of the participants didn't pick the actual pit bull when choosing several of the dogs to name as pit bulls. This brings into questions- how accurate are the dog bites statistics that are out there?

Through out the semester I will be visiting the Writing Center frequently to get the introductions to be well written, as well as short sweet and to the point. 

Today I have been adding color to some of the dogs I've drawn so far. I am not really a fan of color though, I like the look of the dogs when they are just line drawings. Also, I realized today when I began trying to add color that I may have made more work for myself. When I did the first drawings of each dog, I used the pencil tool and drew line by line which if I wanted to just change the color of the line it would be easy, but when it comes to adding full color, that is not working out. So I am having to basically re-drawing the dogs and use the line drawings to add the detailing.