Doberman Prints by Sibley and Hupfield

The Doberman is an exercise in line. It is a short-coated dog with almost no texture to draw, built on long clean curves - the arched neck, the deep chest, the tuck-up, the straight back - and the whole animal has to be carried by those curves and by the light falling across muscle. There is nowhere to hide. An artist who is slightly out on the proportions produces a black dog rather than a Doberman.

The head is the other difficulty. The long wedge of the muzzle and the tan markings above the eyes give the breed its expression, and the markings themselves are a trap: put them a fraction wrong and the dog looks permanently surprised.

Mike Sibley works in graphite and often spends more than two hundred hours on a single drawing. On a smooth black coat that time goes entirely into modelling - keeping detail in the dark areas without lifting the whole dog to grey, which is the thing owners of black dogs always say photographs get wrong.

Brian Hupfield's Doberman Pinscher gives you a second reading, with a looser and warmer line. It is worth seeing both.

Dobermans also appear in the Working dogs section alongside the other guarding and herding breeds.

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