Hound Yoga... the Full Story

June 1, 2025

Hound Yoga. This project started as a relatively simple idea that was a challenge to execute, and then grew into a larger multi-print project that pretty much defined a tumultuous few months. Here is what happened...

First... A Bit About Maggie

Deb and I adopted Maggie through a rescue in 2019. She was (yes, there is a sad part to this story) a treeing Walker coonhound who came to us with a world of problems. Maggie's health issues took more than a year to resolve, and we are not sure if her anxiety ever completely went away. Regardless, Maggie was a very sweet dog. One of the best we have ever had in our family. Everyone loved her calm demeanor and beautiful look. She was my near constant companion for almost six years. During Maggie's time with us we travelled the country. She had paws on the ground in 33 states, walked shorelines from the Florida Keys to Acadia N.P. in Maine, and hiked in Arizona deserts and above the tree line in Colorado. Maggie will be missed.

The First Hound Yoga

Deb and I both practice yoga to stay somewhat limber and fit. Maggie would often 'join in' with her own morning stretch. I started sketching hound dogs in various yoga poses as an exercise in drawing dogs in different positions. I had some fun drawing a dog in unrealistic yoga poses, and thought, 'these might make a fun little print'. I had been thinking about trying to do a larger piece, so I started plotting out a collection of sketches into one large piece that would become 'Hound Yoga'.

This is a design featuring 25 hounds in different poses carved into a large 16" x 22" piece of linoleum, accomplished with a two-color reduction with one layer of tan/brown ink under a layer of black ink. I gave a moment's thought to doing 'Hound Yoga' as a two-block print with a key block and a tan/brown block, but I knew that just clearing away all the white area on one block was going to be a big task... much less doing it on two separate blocks. In hindsight, I should have made two blocks, because problems with registration would reduce this edition from a planned 25 to only 10. Had I used the key block method, I could have printed a larger edition.

Hound Yoga was completed in early Summer, 2024, and quickly became a popular print. The entire edition ended up with ten prints, eight of which sold very quickly. The ninth is on display in our home. The tenth is on display and for sale at the Art Box 137 gallery in St. Augustine (at the writing of this blog).

Too Popular to Ignore

I move through print projects pretty quickly, and usually have three or four in progress from sketches to final printing at any one time. So after Hound Yoga was finished I moved on to other projects. The popularity of the print was almost immediately apparent, and many people asked me for smaller versions. Since I do not make giclée reproductions of my prints, these requests gave me ample opportunity to explain the difference between my original hand-made art and a reproduction. I was bombarded for months to produce some follow-up editions, but there was no way I was going to carve the entire design again, or anything close to as much work. I did save digital copies of the original drawings, so the idea to make some prints of single sketches something worth considering... but I did not move on it for months.

Creative Block, Studio, & Tragedy

By January 2025 I had become more than a bit frustrated with my small working space. This led to a series of failed projects and one of those creative blocks many artists sometimes have to endure. I finally signed the lease on a new studio space that I moved into at the beginning of February, 2025. This coincided with rebranding as Old City Printmakers, and all the work that entails, which did not help in lifting the creative funk that I was in. I did very little printing at all that month, and nothing I deemed worthy to edition.

Maggie's health started to falter in early February. I will spare you the details, but she ended up being in a lot of pain due to very hard to diagnose issues in the bones of her hips, problems that were neither treatable nor operable. Maggie left us in the third week of February, just as the studio was ready to use... but I did not have any good project ideas I was very enthusiastic about. The first print I completed was a dedication to Maggie, but I was not happy with the quality of the print, so I did not release it. Here is a picture of that print:

Print project number one in the Old City Printmakers studio failed, which drove me further into a funk, but I had an old idea to fall back on.

13 Reduction Woodcut Prints in Six Weeks

Not feeling particularly creative, and wanting to do something better to commemorate Maggie, I started the Hound Yoga singles project. Initially, the plan was to make 10 different prints from the original Hound Yoga sketches in three different sizes. I decided to make the blocks on shina plywood, for no specific reason other than I had the planks available. Given the choice again, I would use linoleum because the carving would be faster and there would be less cleared area for chatter... which I did not want at all in these prints. The project grew to 13 prints because there were some sketches I decided to add to the mix later. Most notably... Hound Yogi.

I pushed hard to complete the project in six weeks so that I could debut all the prints at one time in a display on my wall at Art Box 137 for the entire month of April. And I wanted to test my assertion that given a dedicated studio with plenty of space, I could be very productive. Thirteen editions in six weeks (fifteen, actually... because I slipped in a couple more that were not a part of Hound Yoga). Better than two editions per week, working 4-5 full days per week. By comparison, I completed 23 editions in all of 2024.

Which is my favorite? Hound & Butterfly and Dog & Butterfly (same sketch in different sizes. This is the image that reminds me most of Maggie.