What a custom oil portrait commission actually looks like

Most people ordering their first painted portrait worry about the wrong thing. They ask about size first. The thing that decides whether you love the finished painting is the photograph you send us — and it is almost never the photo people think it is.

Start with the photo, not the canvas size

A portrait painting is not a photograph reproduced by hand. It is an interpretation. That means the reference image does not need to be technically perfect — it needs to be emotionally right, and it needs enough information in the areas that matter.

Here is the test we ask customers to run. Cover the background. Now look only at the face, or the dog’s eyes, or the doorway of the house. Is there enough detail there for someone to recognise the subject from that patch alone? If yes, we can paint it well. If the face is a smudge because it was two metres away in a group shot, we will be inventing, and invented details rarely feel like the person you remember.

What makes a good reference

• Soft, even light. Overhead sun creates hard shadows that carve strange shapes into a face. An overcast day or a window-lit room almost always works better.
• Eyes in focus. Human beings read faces at the eyes. If they are sharp, the painting will feel alive even if the rest is loose.
• Visible hair and fabric shapes. These give the painter somewhere to be expressive. Flat, blown-out highlights remove that opportunity.
• Hands you can see. Hands are where portraits go wrong. It is far easier to keep hands calm and natural when we can actually see the fingers.
• Room around the subject. If the head is touching the edge of the frame, we have to invent the space behind it. A little margin gives us room to compose.

Old photographs are fine. Faded prints, scanned family albums, a slightly soft picture from 1978 — all of this can work. Send what you have and we will tell you honestly what is possible before you commit to anything. There is no charge for that conversation, and we would rather talk you out of a weak reference than deliver a painting that disappoints.

The photo you probably shouldn’t use

Heavily filtered images. If the subject has been, say, smoothed into porcelain by a phone filter, we are painting the filter instead of the person. Also avoid photos where the subject is squinting into strong light, and photos taken with a wide-angle lens right up close — the distortion means we would be painting a nose that the person does not actually have.

Oil, acrylic, or something else?

The difference matters less than people expect, and more in specific ways.

Oil gives you depth. Colours can be blended on the canvas over days, which produces the soft transitions that make a portrait feel alive. It is slower to dry, which is an advantage during work and a patience test afterward — an oil painting is usually best left to cure for a few weeks before varnishing and travelling. If you want something you will hand down, this is the choice.

Acrylic dries fast, which means the whole commission is quicker and the surface ends up more matte and modern. It is a great fit for graphic portraits, houses and pets, and for anyone who wants a strong result without waiting a month. If you like a slightly illustrative look, or you need the piece in time for an occasion, acrylic is usually the sensible answer.

Gouache and watercolour are worth considering when the reference is delicate — a light-filled garden, a pale-faced child, an airy interior. They read softer and need to be framed behind glass.

Our honest advice: if the subject is a person and the reference is strong, oil. If the subject is a house, a pet, or a favourite object, acrylic gives you more definition for the money. Neither choice is more “real”.

Sizing a canvas

Sizes are best chosen by where the painting will hang, not by what feels impressive. A common mistake is buying too large for the wall, which makes a portrait feel heavy rather than special.

• Desks and shelf tops: a small portrait panel, roughly a large book in size, propped or hung. Intimate and easy to live with.
• A hallway or a single feature wall: a medium canvas, comfortably bigger than a sheet of paper, reads well at conversation distance.
• Above a sofa or mantel: go large, and crop tighter. Detail that is charming up close becomes mud from three metres away, so a bigger canvas needs a bolder composition.
• Gallery walls: keep the sizes related. Two or three pieces with matching proportions look deliberate; a mismatch looks accidental.

Send us a photo of the wall and a rough measurement of the space and we will tell you what we would hang, including how much breathing room to leave. Rule of thumb: leave more empty wall than you think you need, and hang the centre of the painting at eye level.

What we keep in the studio

Customers often ask what supplies we use, either out of curiosity or because they paint themselves. These are the things that live permanently on our shelf.

How the commission runs, step by step

1. You send the photo. Ideally two or three candidates so we can compare. Tell us what the portrait is for — a gift, a memorial, a wedding, an anniversary — because that shapes how we approach tone and framing.
2. We recommend. Size, medium, framing, and an honest opinion on whether the reference is strong enough. Nothing is charged until you approve the direction.
3. We paint. Progress photos at the blocking-in stage and again near completion. One round of adjustments is included; after the varnish goes on, changes are no longer possible.
4. Curing and finishing. Oil needs to rest before varnishing. We will give you a realistic date rather than an optimistic one.
5. Packing and shipping. Wrapped for transit, with care notes and a note about the reference photo we used.

Hanging and caring for the painting

Keep it out of direct sunlight and away from a radiator or a working fireplace. If you want to light it, a proper picture light is much kinder than a general spotlight, because it spreads the beam instead of blasting a hotspot into the middle of the canvas.

Dust with a dry, soft brush. Never use a damp cloth and never household cleaner. If the surface eventually looks tired, that is what the varnish layer is for — it can be removed and replaced by a conservator without touching the paint underneath.

What if I don’t love it?

This is the question people are too polite to ask, so let us answer it. We show progress photos at two fixed points precisely so that problems are caught while they are still fixable. If something is off — a likeness, a colour, a background you thought would be understated — say so at those checkpoints. It is far easier to change a wet painting than to repaint a finished one, and no one wants a portrait that sits in a cupboard.

The short version

Spend your effort on the photograph. Choose the size by the wall. Pick oil for people and acrylic for objects and deadlines. Buy a few good brushes and artist-grade paint rather than a large set of mediocre ones. Then let the painting take the time it needs — a portrait you keep for thirty years is worth waiting three weeks for.

If you have a photo in mind and are not sure it will work, send it over. We answer every message ourselves, and we will tell you honestly what we would do with it.