The Good Bowl

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.

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.

Details

Handmade, one-of-a-kind artwork

Unframed

A4 — 21 × 29.7 cm (8.3 × 11.7 in)

Watercolour and colour pencil on mixed media paper