Sir Arthur Chadsworth

Many years ago, that is - back in the 1970's, I was teaching preschool. The mother of one of my 3 year old students told me that their family was moving to Hawaii. That sounded exciting, except that they would be unable to take their dog with them. Apparently, household pets brought to the island would be quarantined for 6 months before they could rejoin their family. This family did not want to do that to their dog so she was looking for a new home for him.

She explained that the dog was about a year and a half old, well behaved and loved children. My children were 3 and 5 years old at the time so I thought it might be fun take the dog. We went to meet him...

His name was Sir Arthur Chadsworth. He was an Old English Sheepdog and he was enormous! We put him in the back seat to bring him home and he took up the whole seat.

As I looked through old photographs recently, I found several of Arthur - this was one of my favorites.

I began with a graphite sketch, just to get a beginning idea.

Yeah, he is a BIG dog!

I transferred the sketch to watercolor paper, did a watercolor underpainting and added some pastel.

We always wondered how he could see - and yes, his tongue really was that big.

Arthur became a special part of our family. Just seeing him sitting on the porch - his bottom on the top step and front feet on the step below - was comical and intimating. We felt very safe and comfortable with this loving friend.