A Portrait of Rip the Boat Dog

You know me as a sailor, a restorer of old boats.  Some know me also as a wannabe photographer, even an aspiring writer.  A few know that for years I lettered boats and painted signs for a living.  But few if any know that I'm also an artist — I'd indulged the avocation since childhood.  Some of my artwork from long ago follows below.

While attending Massachusetts College of Art a couple of years after my discharge from the Army in '71, I majored in illustration from 1973 to 1976.  This was before the advent of computer design and graphics, back when what you produced is what you created with your hands, eyes, and imagination.  A class assignment in 1975 was to illustrate something which each student personally loved.  I chose my dog and best friend, Rip van Winkle (he slept an awfully lot as a puppy when I named him).

As you can see in this photo, Rip was something special — a dog you could only love and he returned my affections without reservation.  Since I picked out the 8-week old pup from a litter at the Animal Rescue League in 1973, he and I were inseparable.  I was even encouraged by my classmates and professors alike to bring him along into our classrooms.  Rip made the perfect subject for that assignment, and this portrait provided something permanent by which to remember him.  Rip smoothly transitioned with me to living aboard boats and cruising up and down the East Coast, became "Rip the Boat Dog" even to towing the dinghy by its painter in his teeth wherever I pointed.  In 1985 he went his way as all things mortal will, a very sad day for me and for all the friends he made during his lifetime.

If you didn't notice, you can barely make out my stylized signature alongside his left front and back paws, but it appears below enlarged:

A few more samples of my artwork

My good buddy and fellow Army vet Barry's new Corvette
after he sanded down the brand new factory finish, buried it in multiple coats of acrylic lacquer,
wet-sanded his new paint job by hand then waxed and polished it to a mirror finish.
Barry's work-of-art deserved to be captured.

The assignment for the class was to illustrate my favorite interests, which for me at that time were
the 48' wooden ketch Even Song originally built in 1928 that friends and I were restoring,
motorsport dirt biking, and of course my best buddy Rip.  (click here to enlarge)
 

Speaking of the Even Song, my first shot at boat-lettering was painting and air-brushing the name, homeport, and a
subtle sunrise scene on our Even Song's freshly varnished mahogany transom, working from our dinghy.  It came out so
well that for more than a decade I made a living doing it wherever I was, even plying my trade in ports-of-call up and
down the Eastern Seaboard during our cruising — I always found a boat to letter anywhere we docked for a day or two!

More samples of my artwork (a few t-shirt designs)