Collies: Border Collie and Bearded Collie Prints

The Gatekeeper is the one to look at first. It is a Border Collie at a gate, and it is probably the best-known image Sibley has made. The appeal of it is not the dog on its own but the situation - an animal doing a job, waiting, entirely certain of what it is for. Anyone who has worked a collie recognises it immediately.

Collies are a particular test for an artist because so much of the breed is in the eye. A Border Collie's stare is the working tool - it is how the dog moves sheep - and a drawing that misses it produces a pleasant black and white dog with nothing behind the face. Sibley gets it. He works in graphite and often spends more than two hundred hours on a single drawing, and in a rough collie coat that comes out as individual hairs rather than shading.

B.A. Crosby and Robbie Ferrier are also here, including Ferrier's Border Collie in Spring, which is a softer and more pastoral treatment than the Sibley pieces. Having more than one hand on the same breed is useful: the same dog drawn two ways is a noticeably different picture on a wall.

Border Collies have their own page within this section if that is specifically what you are after.

Everything here is a giclee print on archival paper with fade-resistant inks, so nothing yellows over the years. Most are nineteen pounds ninety-nine, sized around 41 x 28 cm before mounting to fit a standard off-the-shelf frame. Each print has stayed in its wrapping since the day it was bought and has never been hung or displayed.