Pet Portraits & Family Portraits in oils on linen, pastel paintings and pencil drawings

Melanie and Nick at their Easels

Often people are surprised that we stand in front of our easels from start to finish and paint our portraits by hand. Some people have even sugested that our artwork is digitally produced, or that we send our commissions overseas to be painted by a production line of artists, but we guarantee all of our work is traditionally hand painted and drawn by ourselves.

We both trained professionally at college and have been running our business now for over 16 years and have build a good name and a great reputation as being artists in our own right. We have a standing in the art world, we are two of the most prolific, experienced and professional pet portrait artists on the internet and we have many students learning both animal and portrait painting under our tutorledge.

How we Create our Pet Portraits

The stages below show one of our portraits from start to finish - from the photo to the framed portrait. We take time to discuss with each client exactly what they require, listen to what their ideas are and collaborate with them discussing what would do their pet and photographs justice. Every client and every commission is an individual.

First we take time to study all of the photos, looking at the animals character, the personality, colouring fine hairs and markings and then start to draw either with a pencil on paper or pencil on canvas the outline of the animal. We then either block in the colours using paint, pastel or tonal rages with pencil if its a drawing. Each stage in every medium is built up slowly to create a very realistic but still painterly quality to the artwork. We are not looking to achieve a completely photo realistic copy from your photo - we are looking to recreate an image of your pet, capturing the essence, personality and character. In the process we make a number of decisions to achieve our end goal. We may enhance a background, we may remove a background altogether and replace it with an alternative, we may remove objects and replace with another prop - a dogs favoruite ball or toy etc. We may remove bridles and halters, all to achieve the perfect representation of your particular animal.

Viewing the different mediums and styles

If you would like to read more about the mediums we use, and view more step by step photos of us using the mediums, then why not visit our Portraits Styles page to give you a deeper insight into how we work.