For six Sundays in a row I sat at the dining table with a sketchbook and a stubby pencil, trying to capture Kaya, my black-and-tan mixed breed. Every attempt went wrong in a different way. The ears came out too big, the eyes too close together, and once, memorably, she looked like a startled otter.
Anyone who sketches will tell you that dogs are hard. They never hold still, their fur hides their structure, and the thing that makes them themselves, the tilt of the head or the shape of the brow, is exactly what slips away on the page.
What I was really trying to capture
I did not need a gallery piece. I wanted something with Kaya’s face on it that we could actually use, something that showed she was herself and not a generic brown dog. My sketches never got there, and the shop-bought bandanas in her drawer, with their stars and paw prints, did not even try.
How the bandana came together
In the end I handed the job to Little Red Cute and got a personalised dog bandana, with Kaya illustrated from a photo instead of from my shaky pencil. Here is how it went, step by step:
- Pick the photo. I went with a sharp phone shot taken by the window one morning, well lit, Kaya’s face fully visible and looking near enough at me.
- Upload it and choose a style. There are different looks to pick from for the illustration.
- Look over the result. This was the moment my sketches never reached: Kaya, recognisably Kaya, with her name added.
- Say yes, then pay. The shop makes nothing before that yes, and mine was produced here in Singapore once ordered.
The cloth itself
It is all polyester and closes with a buckle. The picture goes on by sublimation, a process any printmaker would recognise in spirit, with heat and pressure pushing the image into the fabric where I would have used a brush. Better still for Kaya, the cloth was made to be washed.
Sizing follows the neck. Small spans about 35–44 cm, medium about 39–51 cm and large about 42–56 cm. Kaya measured 37 cm, so S it was.
The sketchbook, retired
I still doodle on Sundays, mostly coffee cups and the cat next door. Kaya’s portrait, though, now sits on the bandana around her neck, and it looks more like her than anything I managed in six weeks. I have made peace with that. The otter drawing stays on the fridge.