The sketches used for our entries this week, aka “The Dog Lovers' Guide to the Presidential Election,” were drawn by Susan Donley, a Pittsburgh artist who sold her first drawing in the sixth grade – four portraits of the Monkees, purchased by a classmate for $2.

Drawing was Donley's first love (though I’m guessing Davy Jones was up there, too), but she drifted away from it as an adult, working in art education, with museums and with websites.

“You don’t mean to drift away, you just do. I found my creativity going more into web design, and it had been quite a while since I picked up the pencil. It was pixels instead of pencils,” Donley -- that's her self portrait to the left -- said in a telephone interview.

In her 40s – though she’d never entirely put it down -- she picked drawing up again when she was trying to help a friend who had accidentally run over and killed his own elderly beagle. “The dog was old and just didn’t hear the car, it was just a horrible, horrible accident. I felt devastated. I wanted to reach out so badly and couldn’t think of any words to say, so I did a portrait of Sadie and gave it to him and the reaction was so amazing. It did what I wanted it to do -- took away the away horrible images in his mind and replaced it with good memories of Sadie.”

With that, Donley began the transition to full-time artist. Her work can be seen on her web site, petspictured.com. About half of her drawings are memorial portraits, she said – based on photos sent in by pet owners, or often by friends who chip in together to buy one for acquaintances who have recently lost a pet.

“There’s a need, and a market,” Donley said. “The world doesn’t stop and you don’t get personal days when you lose a pet, yet your heart aches just as badly.”

Donley's drawings which take about 10 hours each to complete, start at $325 for an 8-inch by 8-inch portrait. She draws humans too, but prefers pets as her subjects. “There’s none of the vanity you get with human portraits. Nobody ever says please don’t make my Basset hound’s eyes saggy,” said Donley, who is 54 and lives with her poodle, Rosie.

The window to a dog’s soul – and the key to capturing it on paper – are a dog’s eyes, Donley says, and even within breeds dogs have many unique characteristics.

“It’s not a cookie cutter kind of thing. If you don’t capture the eyes you don’t have the portrait, but expression also comes from the ears, the body language, the eyebrows, and of course every dog has a wonderful smile.”