what is dogthing

what is a dogthing?

form

a dogthing is a "dog thing". they have a very simplified form resembling a dog. they often lack a mouth, open eyes, or a nose. they often have closed eyes that look like a long arc, whiskers, rounded ears, a dark tail-tip, and indistinct, long, rounded legs.

they are any color you like them to be, including colors that aren't opaque. they can be outlines, they can be green, they can be rainbow, they can be chrome. they can be any size, small or tall. they play between realities frequently, crossing the gap between the different dimensions without much care.

they are often contemplative, celebratory, melancholy, restful, flexible, flighty, fickle, and fleeting.

these are all features of "my" dogthings. you may find other animal-things elsewhere drawn by other people with different motifs and shape. they aren't a 'species' or something you have to ask permission for, because i don't own them - no one does! but it makes me happy to see them in the wild anyway.

function

i created "my" dogthings in 2023 or so, at least as far as self-described dogthings. i am not a particularly character-driven creature. i struggle to create and develop characters, or really have much interest in doing so. i'm more of an environmental artist, or an experimental artist, or what-have-you. scenes without a subject.

of course, having no subject to draw makes it hard to want to draw much at all. sometimes i want to just draw. it can be difficult to "just draw" when you havven't got an idea of "what" to draw.

i "created" my dogthings as an "avatar". not quite a fursona, but not entirely unbiased in their perceptions of the world. i designed them to be easy to draw, so i'm not stuck on proportion, shape, size, or form for longer than necessary. if something is hard to draw, you will draw it less. i take this philosophy with me everywhere, even outside of, say, fursona designs, and i find it has given me a lot of mileage.

so, basically, dogthings have become a recurring motif in my artwork because i want to draw something animal-like but don't really enjoy keeping characters anymore. it's an essential topping to any of my artwork. i don't focus on them as something to improve on, because they aren't meant to be improved on, necessarily. as long as i am keeping the essence of the dogthing in mind, it will, in the end, become a dogthing. i hope this makes sense to you as much as it makes sense to me.

examples of a dogthing

dogthings, being so simple, can vary in looks. i have drawn quite a few dogthings. take a look! (this is not all of the dogthings ive drawn.)