This is the stage where the site is selling something, and it seems right to say so at the top, not three paragraphs in. We make one thing: a portrait of your animal in a painted style, made from a photograph you already have. The pages below cover the styles, the formats, and the cases where a portrait is the wrong answer. Everything in the three stages before this one is free to read and stays free whether you order anything or not.
The reading, in order
- A portrait of your own animal: The short version: your own photo in one of five painted styles, with a free preview before anything is printed.
- Watercolour: The watercolour style: soft washes, gentle edges and the grain of the paper left showing.
- The cat portrait: Why cats are harder to portray than dogs, and why a good photo of one is harder to get than you expect.
- Framed, or on canvas: The canvas set in a wood frame, delivered with the hanging hardware already fitted.
- Where it is printed: The specification: what the canvas and frame are, where they are printed, and what we will not claim.
- Memorial gifts: Sending a portrait to someone who has lost a pet, straight to their door, with no price in the parcel.
- A gift for someone grieving: What to send when flowers do not feel like enough: a portrait made from one photograph of the animal they lost.
- For someone who has lost a dog: A gift for someone whose dog has died, made from one photograph of that dog.
- For someone who has lost a cat: What to send someone who has lost a cat, what to avoid, and where a portrait fits among the rest.
- Dog memorials, by breed: Memorial portraits of any dog, with a short section on each of twenty-one breeds.
- Cat memorials, by breed: Memorial portraits of any cat, with a short section on each of eight breeds and coats.
- Every memorial page: A memorial portrait of your own dog or cat, made slowly and from their own photograph.
What these pages keep concluding
Read them side by side and they all arrive at the same narrow point. What people want isn't a picture of a dog, it's a picture of that dog: the ears at the angle they sat, the white patch in the wrong place, the expression the rest of the family recognises from the doorway. That is why every page here starts from a photograph you already own, not from anything on a shelf, and why the preview is free and watermarked. If the portrait doesn't look like them, you have lost nothing.
Before and after
Below, one sample image and the same image in a watercolour style. The other styles are oil, charcoal, line and pastel, and you see a free watermarked preview of your own photograph before you pay.
The whole path
The path ends here. The first stage starts back at the grief itself, and the guides hold every piece of writing on this site.