Bull Terriers: English and Staffordshire Prints

The English Bull Terrier is one of the few dogs that is genuinely difficult to draw because the head has no stop at all. The profile is a continuous convex curve from the top of the skull to the end of the nose - the breed standard calls it egg-shaped - and there is no landmark anywhere along it to hang a drawing on. Draw it slightly wrong and the whole animal reads as a mistake rather than as a Bull Terrier. Both Sibley and Hupfield get the curve right, which is more of an achievement than it sounds.

The small triangular eye is the other trap. It sits high and close-set, and it gives the breed its particular expression, somewhere between mischief and calculation. Sibley works in graphite and often spends more than two hundred hours on a single drawing, and on a short white coat that time goes almost entirely into the modelling of the head.

Hupfield's Staffordshire Bull Terrier is a different dog altogether despite the shared name - broader, shorter in the face, and with a good deal more obvious muscle. Staffies also have their own page under Dogs if that is the breed you actually want.

All three are giclee prints on archival paper with fade-resistant inks, so nothing yellows over the years. All are nineteen pounds ninety-nine. Sizes sit around 41 x 28 cm before mounting, which fits a standard off-the-shelf frame without a trip to a framer.

Each print has stayed in its wrapping since the day it was bought, has never been hung or displayed, and comes to you clean and unmarked.