Audrey Pfund

Audrey Pfund is known to “nerd out” over dachshunds, and the young painter turned big-city graphic designer puts care and attention into rendering her canine subjects.

{mosads}”I love challenging myself to see what I can paint, to make it as realistic as possible,” Pfund said recently of depicting Baxter, 13, and Gabby, 6, her family’s dachshunds.

Pfund, a fan of D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum, typically deals not in acrylic but infographics for the federal government as an associate design manager at the Partnership for Public Service.

The Virginia Tech grad is also training for her first marathon in November. 

She sketches typographic drawings for friends at a small desk at her house near Eastern Market and has been known to use a single brush for entire paintings.

“Once I know how the brush works and learn its ins and outs, I rarely want to switch,” she said.

— Jesse Byrnes