The Good Bowl - Print
A bowl of biscuits, drawn for the creature most likely to appreciate the subject matter.
The Good Bowl is part of my Art for Dogs series, where I explore what happens when you make art with a canine audience in mind. Here, as I was using light and shadow to give a flat drawing depth, I started wondering whether a dog would see that depth too.
Details
Unframed print on quality 200gsm matte paper.
8" x 10" (20cm x25 cm)
11" x 14" (27cm x 35cm)
Nerd notes
Depth in a picture is an illusion. A flat surface has no actual depth — our brains construct it from clues such as shading and perspective.
It seems dogs can do something similar. In a 2024 study, dogs watched a ball roll towards what looked like a hole, created on a flat surface using shading and perspective. When the ball rolled straight across the “hole”, the dogs looked longer at the scene — a response researchers use as a sign that something unexpected has happened.
In other words, their brains appeared to have seen a hole where there wasn’t one. Just like ours do.
