Lassie and Rough Collie Drawings
When I was not watching Lassie, I was drawing Lassie! I taught myself to draw and could do so fairly well from grade six onwards. I drew mostly dogs and horses, but also had a go at other animals and people - people are hard! I drew dogs the most. I could not stop thinking of Lassie. I read the few books I had at the time, watched anything that came on television, and drew Lassie on paper.
Here are a few of the best drawings I have done of this gorgeous rough collie. This page began with just Lassie drawings... but I found a few rough collie ones I could not resist putting in!
The Lassie illustration you see on every page of this site was drawn in 1999 for the Lassie drawing contest... more on that later. It is one of the best of Lassie I have ever done.
Lassie sniffing a glove. This is one of the first colour drawings I did. Most things I drew in pencil.
This drawing that I named "A Sable Collie" - which is of course Lassie, as you all know! - adorns the cover of a music scrapbook of grade one piano scores. I reckon Lassie is in a show stance! I drew this at age 12.
I believe this pencil drawing was done in approximately 1990. Even though the full Lassie blaze is not there I am sure I did it because of Lassie! I cut out the collie shape, covered the front with contact to protect it, and the drawing was displayed blue-tacked to my mirror for quite a few years. Later on I stuck it to a hardback book cover to keep it flat! Now it is in a folder.
Named "A Collie" this is obviously Lassie, with the blaze and a long, long tail! This pencil drawing was covered in contact both sides, probably made as a bookmark as I made a couple. But I never used it as a bookmark! It has resided in a photo album for many years, along with a few other dog drawings. I dated it Saturday, 19 January 1991, seen on the drawing as 19-1-91. In Australia with numerical dates we put the day first, then month, then year. I was on school holidays at the time (Australia has the long summer holiday over Christmas). I spent a lot of time drawing on holidays!
A pencil drawing of Lassie in an exercise book.
A drawing of Lassie's head, left side. This was drawn in late 1991, possibly around September. It is on the inside back cover of another exercise book which was a journal of a holiday we took from September to October in the next state. Most exercise books I put drawings in were not for school. The background picture shows someone camping in the Australian outback - at Ayers Rock to be exact - and was from a magazine. I often cut and pasted pictures of animals from magazines and stuck them on exercise book covers! Yes this book is getting on in years, that is sticky tape on the left holding it together.
Another drawing of Lassie from an exercise book, hence the lines! It was drawn on Saturday, 15 November 1997.
I drew this for the 1999 Lassie drawing contest The Lassie Network held. I was one of the semifinalists in the competition.
My attempt at drawing a rough collie running. Not everything I have drawn stays still! I drew this on 3 January 2000. This was drawn in a small A5 Quill visual art diary, as are the rest of the pictures below.
A head study and side view of Lassie, drawn on Monday, 18 June 2001. I like to put in details. The closeup of the head did not turn out that great, but was good practice.
Watching one of my videos of Lassie, I tried drawing Lassie "live action" and this is the best of three pages crammed with Lassie sketches. I wanted to get more of a feel for what she (sorry, he) was really like. Drawn on 18 July 2001.
On the facing page to the above picture (this is a spiral art book) I also drew this head study of Lassie. It was drawn on the same day as the four sketches in the above picture.
The following drawing was completed on 26 July 2001. The Lassie drawing contest was on again. I was excited. What would the other drawings look like? I scanned the picture before sending it by snail mail post, as I knew it would not be sent back. I also drew the illustration at the top of the page for the competition, scanned it into my computer and sent that off too.
I waited and waited, and still did not see any entries appearing on The Lassie Network site. I queried them. The address was definitely correct, checked and double checked. My letter was labelled clearly and was stamped. But it did not arrive at its destination. Were any other entries received? Strangely, no, not a single one! All had disappeared without a trace. I was amazed, shocked, surprised, disappointed and sad that others would not be able to see the drawings I had worked on for hours. It was sad too other people's fantastic talent at drawing their favourite canine television star would not be revealed.
I am glad to have the scans of my Lassie drawings - without which they would have been lost forever.
This absolutely gorgeous rough collie was based on a photograph from a dog book.
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