Sam Brown’s www.explodingdog.com isn’t what you think – no pets are harmed in its production. Instead, Brown takes the one-line phrases sent in by visitors and creates illustrations around them via a Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop. (He’s also started working in the ancient medium of “paper.”) Thus, you’ll find drawings on his five-year-old website with titles like: “you couldn’t have known,” “not in control,” or “just this” – among hundreds of others. What do they mean? That’s up to your subconscious. Here’s what Sam has to say about his creations.

How did you initially get the idea to illustrate other people’s titles?

It started out when I was doing ICQ with a friend, and he suddenly said, “Draw a picture to this title,” just because he thought I would draw a funny picture for it. I just sat in Photoshop and drew the picture quickly and sent it back to him. From there, I did that about five times with him, put those pictures up on the website and said, “If you send me a title, I’ll draw more pictures.” I meant it to be a joke, and had it up for a week or something, and then suddenly people started sending me titles through word of mouth, and I kept doing it. And from there it became pretty big.

What else have you done with this concept?

I’ve done three books, and I actually have another book coming in the spring. I’m trying to do animations, and I’m doing a lot of drawings by hand – silk screens and stuff. I’ve been trying to do a lot of stuff that’s more solid, that isn’t just on the Internet, so I can actually show people what I do.

Have you considered syndication in newspapers?

I’m not really interested in that, because I don’t think I would fit that well in newspapers. I would have to tailor what I do to fit it in, and I think that it would lose its quality.

Have you ever been stumped by a caption?

I guess I have, but there are so many that I just throw them out if I’m not interested in it. I just keep going through them until I find something I want to do. I’ve done around 2,000 drawings.

How many submissions do you get a day?

Some days it’s 10 or 20, and some days it’s like 200. They’re whatever people imagine – some are song lyrics, something from a book, or something they made up.

And how do you select the ones you illustrate?

Most of the ones I select are usually pretty simple and they leave room for interpretation. They’re not something very specific like, “My brother Peter standing in the corner of the room.” It’ll be some sort of title I can add something to.

Have themes developed over the years, or are they all totally random?

There are themes, and there is sort of a connection between a lot of the drawings. But it’s not usually intentional -- nothing specific I can think of.

Part of the time I was doing this, I did drawings in the morning. So I would do the drawings after I had woken up, and a lot of them would be based on dreams -- and I wouldn’t even realize it. But I would start drawing, and I’d think, “Oh, I just had a dream about this.” There’s one picture of a Roman emperor coming through a wall with my car keys, and that was based on a dream.

Do people ever reveal too much about themselves with their submissions?

A lot of times, people will send in a story along with the title – and those ones will never get drawn because it puts in my head what they wanted, or what they’re thinking about it. I don’t do ones that have song titles I recognize.

Do you ever get unusual reactions to the illustrations?

I guess a lot of them are open to interpretation, so people do see them in completely different ways that were never intended. Sometimes people will see stuff as me being mean or very negative in drawings that I thought were super-positive, which always makes me feel weird – somehow it said this to this person unintentionally.

Do you ever get hate mail?

I do get a lot of people who are angry because I draw stick figures, and they feel that it’s not sophisticated enough – that there’s no reason I should be selling T-shirts of books with stick figures on them. I just ignore them. Some of them I’ve done drawings from, like some people will say, “You’re the worst artist ever,” and I’ll do a drawing based on that. It’s fun!