What is the breed standard of the German Shepherd Dog by the AKC regulations?

I wanted to accurately depict the permitted markings for the German Shepherd Dog by the American Kennel Club breed standard. Preserving breeds by creating dogs that continue to meet the breed standard in every way in order to keep breed lines functional for their intended purpose is very important to me. What is the point of breeding a GSD that has hip and/or elbow dysplasia by age 3, entirely preventable health issues, incorrect structure, size, and proportion that lead to further health issues, and off colours bred on purpose for more money because they're "rare" when you could instead have one that meets the physical standard and is an incredibly versatile working dog as the breed was intended to be? This is an important topic because if the issue isn't addressed soon, the dogs being created will get progressively farther from the breed standard and with enough time the breed will be all but ruined, nothing like the original working dogs they were bred to be.

Soft coloured pencils, smooth bristol board, photoshop to add text. I chose coloured pencil because I loved the way it allowed me to get the textures in the fur direction the way I wanted, as well as the ability to blend colours more precisely the way I needed to to achieve accurate markings.

I chose to use four identical base sketch outlines against a white background and simple, digital text because I wanted the full focus to be on the specific markings of each dog, nothing else. I wanted them to pop out and draw your attention to the differences between them rather than similarities. By keeping everything simple and highlighting differences the point of the work gets across more effectively.

Each breed has its own designated "stack" or natural neutral stance that the dog takes most often when standing still. The German Shepherd Dog's is a 3 point stack as can be seen in these drawings. The conformation of the dog is judged by how it looks in a stack and how it moves. Since movement would be harder to show in a single drawing on paper, I chose to show the difference that a bad stack makes. All of the dogs used as references are proven working dogs with conformation titles on their structures, and all were drawn with the same proportions in order to make it easier to see the difference. All also had many different sketches done to prepare for putting them on the final paper. A lot of buzzwords are thrown around by people breeding GSDs unethically such as "straightbacked" or "old style gsd" in reference to dogs with little to no slope of their back. The problem with that is that many of those dogs are actually bred to a worse or lower standard than the dogs with "sloped backs" because most of the dogs whose backs' slope in a stack would have a relatively straight back if they stood differently, or an overly sloped back if they stretched their stance. My goal was to show that even with the same dog, a different stance can entirely change the appearance of the conformation, and breeders who claim to have "old style" or "straightbacked" lines are just trying to take advantage of people who don't know what they're looking for.

I used coloured pencil, pen, graphite, smooth bristol, and a lot of sketches to get each dog right. I was really happy with it when it was clean white but I didn't like that it didn't look finished the way I wanted it to, so I decided to add grey into the back of it. I didn't end up having time to finish all of them, but I have kind of come back around to liking the plainer ones better and regret trying to add the grey. Most of my time went into the accuracies of the sketches, and I should have just left it at that. Over all though I am very happy with how the actual dogs ended up looking.

From left to right, the stance is: very understacked, slightly understacked, correct, slightly overstacked, and extremely overstacked. I intentionally put them in order from least to most to make it easier to follow the differences in each stance, and I think it really helped make it easier to look at. I am happy with the uniformity of them as well, I think it helps highlight the differences I was trying to draw attention to. I wish I had at least taken a photo before starting to add the grey because I don't like the way it looks now with it, but everything else I think turned out the way I wanted.

Many backyard GSD breeders don't put much focus or thought into the structure of "smaller" aspects of a dog like their facial and skull structure. My goal was to show some different angles of German Shepherd skull structures, but also slightly different shapes of skulls. Even a small difference can be an obvious difference, and ear positioning is very commonly ignored. You can see that some of the dogs I drew have wider set ears than others, and some of them have different head shapes all together. As a result, some of them look pretty incorrect because of that and you can kind of tell which ones are "worse" than others.

All were sketched with graphite first onto smooth bristol. The top two were filled in with blick markers, but when I got to the fourth one I decided I didn't like the way the markers looked so I switched to soft coloured pencils. I think the third dog is my personal favourite and I am really happy with the way it ended up looking after switching to coloured pencils. I prefer the way the pencils blend and the textures that can be added with them to using the markers, and I prefer the precision of colour mixing the pencils offer.

I chose to off-center the dogs and alternate their colouring to keep your eye moving across them, and I think switching to pencils to add more detail was a good choice because it kept them more interesting than the flat tones of the markers. The movement of your eye also draws attention to what does and doesn't look correct which was the goal. If people are paying attention to what looks wrong in a drawing, maybe seeing it in a dog will stand out more.