Personalisation, for us, means the portrait has to look like this pet, their specific eye colour, their particular marking pattern, the slight cowlick above one ear. Not a template with a name overlaid.
Dog portraits and cat portraits
A dog portrait and a cat portrait are made the same way. You send one clear photo of their face, choose oil, watercolour, charcoal, line or pastel, and look at the result before you decide anything. Animal portraits of other pets work the same way, as long as the photo shows a face with some shape to it: the eyes, the muzzle, the set of the ears. If the portrait is for a dog or cat who has died, the dog memorial and cat memorial pages are written for that.
Pet portraits in the UK
We post to UK addresses only, and delivery is included in the price. What the canvas and the frame are, in the manufacturer's own words, is set out on the full specification page.
A portrait for Christmas
A portrait of a dog or cat who is very much still part of the house is one of the more personal things to give at Christmas, and the order needs only one thing: a clear photograph of them. Oil is the warm, weighted one, watercolour is the airy one and charcoal is the understated one, with line and pastel to choose from as well.
Allow 4 to 9 working days for UK delivery, and leave some margin. The delivery estimate is shown before you pay.
How we personalise
You upload a photograph and pick one of five styles: oil, watercolour, charcoal, line or pastel. Once you accept one, it is printed on canvas stretched over a 2cm FSC wood frame, made to order and posted to a UK address.
Name, species, breed, and dates don't appear on the canvas itself (we deliberately don't print text onto the portrait, keeping it in the frame of a real portrait).
What we keep consistent
The painted style is the brand. We don't offer Renaissance-king themes, superhero parodies, or cartoon styles. Every Small Goodbyes canvas stays in the same calm, painterly register. It is one of the reasons people choose us: a dignified portrait, not a novelty. Within that register there are five styles, not one, and you see all of them before choosing.
What you control
Which photograph you send, which of the five styles you choose, which size and frame you want, and whether you accept the portrait. We deliver to UK addresses only, so there is no country to pick. Everything else follows from the photo.
Sizes and framing
- Canvas, 30x40cm, on a 2cm FSC wood stretcher.
- Canvas, 50x70cm, the same thing at a scale that holds a wall.
- Framed, in black, white, natural or brown, at 30x41cm, 41x51cm or 51x71cm. See the framed portraits
If it doesn't look right
Then do not accept it. That is how it works, and it happens before any money moves: the preview is free and watermarked, you can generate another, and the button that puts it in the basket is disabled until you have ticked the one you want. There is no approval round-trip after payment because there is nothing left to approve.
Once it has been printed, our delivery and returns page is the policy and this page will not promise more than it does: if your print arrives damaged, misprinted, or not what you ordered, tell us as soon as you can with your order reference and a photo of the issue, and we will reprint or refund, your choice. This doesn't limit your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Because each portrait is made from your photograph, the right to cancel for a change of mind does not apply.
What makes a personalised pet portrait good
A custom pet portrait worth keeping does three things at once: it captures the specific animal, not the species; it keeps the pose dignified, not cute; and it commits to one artistic register instead of mixing styles. Most personalised pet portraits fail on the second test, the customer asked for a portrait of their dog and received a portrait of any dog wearing a name. We resist that by anchoring every portrait in your photograph's specific markings, posture, and gaze, then rendering them in one of five styles we have spent time on, never mixing registers within a single picture.
The art-historical reference for our house style is the classic oil portrait: warm earth tones, visible brushwork, neutral background, the sitter centred and looking either toward or past the viewer. It works equally well for a dog portrait, a cat, or any other animal whose face has structure to render. We don't do royal-costume parodies or novelty cartoons. We make four other styles besides the oil, watercolour, charcoal, line and pastel, each made in the same reverent key, never as a costume.
Where to go from here
This page is the hub. The detail lives on the dedicated pages: pet portrait, UK details (sizes, canvas specifications, delivery, ordering); framed pet portrait (the framed version: black, white, natural or brown, at 30x41cm, 41x51cm or 51x71cm).