Portraits of People With Their Pets, Hand-Painted From Photos

Portraits of people with their animals are the hardest photographs to take and among the easiest paintings to love. The animal looks away at the moment the person smiles; the person squints at the moment the dog finally sits. So we usually build these from two photographs — one of the person, one sharp photo of the animal — combined at a consistent scale and light, with a sketch for your approval before painting.

Two subjects, two skills

The person is painted the way every portrait on these pages is: the likeness drawn at the sketch stage, skin in thin warm layers with cool halftones. The animal is painted the way it is on its own breed page — a black Labrador’s coat as colour, a Maine Coon’s tabby pattern mapped and painted through, a horse’s conformation measured. Both get their own care, and the relationship between them — a hand on a shoulder, a nose against a cheek — is what the painting is about.

Scale and composition

A person and a dog fit a portrait canvas; a child and a pony, or a rider with a horse, suit a landscape one. We propose the arrangement in the sketch and recommend a size when we quote. Backgrounds are kept soft — the garden, the yard, the sofa — or replaced with a plain ground.

Memorial and gift commissions

A pet who has passed can be painted with you from older photographs of the animal and a recent one of you. These, and portraits of a child with a first pony, are among the most-commissioned pieces on this page. Acrylic on canvas is the default; charcoal on paper makes a quiet, drawn alternative.