Family portraits
A family portrait from separate photographs
Four people, four photographs, three decades and two countries — assembled into one painting with the light going the same way for everybody.
Almost nobody has a photograph of the whole family taken recently, in focus, in decent light, with everyone looking at the camera and nobody caught mid-sentence. What people have is a wedding picture from 2009, a phone snap of the youngest on a beach, a studio portrait of the parents, and a scan of a grandparents' photograph that is the only one anybody has. That is enough. A family portrait commission is mostly an assembly job, and the painting is the last part of it.
The assembly has rules, and they are not aesthetic ones. Every head has to be the size it would be if the family had stood in one room; the light has to come from one direction for everybody; the shadows have to fall the same way. Break any of those and the painting reads as a collage, even to a viewer who could not tell you what was wrong. So most of the work happens in the digital mock-up, before any paint is mixed — which is also why the mock-up, not the painting, is where a family portrait is actually decided.
Photographs taken in different decades
The hard cases are the ones where somebody survives only as a small faded print, or where a person has died and the family wants them in the picture. A print can be scanned and restored — that is $60–$70 — but the result depends on what was there. A face two centimetres high in a 1974 group shot holds enough information for a likeness at half length and not enough for a close-up, and we will tell you which before you order.
Mixing film and digital is routine. The trap is colour: a 1980s print has drifted magenta, phone photographs are cool and contrasty, and a scanned slide is nearly black in the shadows. Each source is corrected to a shared neutral before composing, so skin tones agree. If they do not agree, the painting looks like a family of strangers standing in a line.
Light, scale and the arithmetic of heads
Pick one key light and keep it. That usually means choosing the photograph with the best light on the face — a window to one side, a soft shadow under the nose — and then adjusting every other source to match, even if the shadow side of somebody's face has to be rebuilt in the mock-up. Nobody in the finished painting should look lit by a different sun.
Scale is measured rather than eyeballed: head height against shoulder width, and against the canvas. A man of 190 cm and a child of 110 cm photographed separately arrive at completely different head sizes relative to the frame, and painted at the same size the child looks like a small adult. We set head heights first, then build the bodies around them. If you send the real heights in centimetres, nothing has to be guessed: the arithmetic is settled before the drawing and not corrected afterwards.
One more element has to be decided: the room. Four people photographed separately have four different backgrounds, so the painting needs a fifth — a wall, a window, a hedge, or a plain dark ground. We keep it quiet. A busy invented interior, with a bookshelf and a lamp nobody in the family has ever owned, is the fastest way to make a family portrait look like a stock photograph with names attached.
How big, and who stands where
A face needs roughly three inches of height to carry a likeness across a room; below that the eyes stop being eyes and become marks. Four people on one canvas want 20 × 24 in at least, six want 24 × 36 in, and eight or more usually work better as two canvases than as one crowded picture, however much the family wants a single frame above the fireplace.
Placement follows height, not status: tallest at the back, shortest in front, and the person who holds the family — often a mother or a grandparent — near the centre, because the eye goes there first. Two people who do not get on can be separated by a third without anyone noticing. What we will not do is add somebody who was never photographed; a face painted from description is a stranger's face.
What it costs
Price is set by canvas size and the number of subjects — not by the occasion, the deadline, or how much detail you ask for. The table below is the same one used on every painting page, so there is no quote to wait for.
| Canvas | Metric | 1 subject | 2 subjects | 3 subjects | 4+ subjects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 × 10 in | 20 × 25 cm | $189 | $259 | — | — |
| 12 × 16 in | 30 × 41 cm | $289 | $379 | $459 | — |
| 16 × 20 in | 41 × 51 cm | $389 | $499 | $619 | $749 |
| 20 × 24 in | 51 × 61 cm | $549 | $699 | $849 | $1,029 |
| 24 × 36 in | 61 × 91 cm | $789 | $1,059 | $1,290 | $1,560 |
| 30 × 40 in | 76 × 102 cm | $1,090 | $1,449 | $1,749 | $2,090 |
| 36 × 48 in | 91 × 122 cm | $1,390 | $1,849 | $2,249 | $2,690 |
Shipping is free worldwide. Framing is optional and quoted separately — most customers have the canvas stretched by a local framer for $60–$120.
How it works
Send the photograph
One sharp phone photo is enough. Tell us the deadline, the wall it is going on, and anything that must or must not be in the picture.
See the mock-up within 24 hours
A digital composite at the exact canvas size and crop, so size and composition are settled before any paint is bought. Nothing is charged until you approve it.
Watch it being painted
Three to five weeks in real oil, with two progress photographs. You can raise a concern at either one — that is what they are for.
Approve, then it ships
You see the finished canvas first, with one free round of adjustments. Then it travels rolled in a rigid tube, tracked and insured, with the numbered certificate inside.
Real oil, not a print
Hand-painted on cotton canvas, varnished, signed. Brushwork you can see in raking light.
You approve before we paint
A digital mock-up at the exact size and crop, within 24 hours, included in the price.
Numbered certificate
Every painting ships with a signed COA stating artist, medium, size and year.
Free worldwide shipping
Rolled in a rigid tube, tracked and insured. No minimum, no distance surcharge.
Questions
Questions we actually get
From $189 for 8 × 10 in with one subject, but a family is priced by headcount: $389 covers 16 × 20 in with two subjects, and the larger sizes add subjects up to four on the same table. For five or more, ask for a figure — it is still a published price, not a negotiation.
Yes, that is most of the work. Faces, clothing and light are reconciled in a digital mock-up at the exact canvas size, and you approve it before painting. Old prints are restored for $60–$70 first. The one thing we cannot do is invent somebody who was never photographed at all.
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons for this commission. We work from the best photograph that exists, which is sometimes a group shot where the face is small. We will tell you how large that face can be painted before it stops holding detail, rather than quietly making it up. The mock-up shows the actual size, so the decision stays yours.
Yes, and we do not ask why. Removing a person means rebuilding what is behind them — a wall, a hedge, another shoulder — and that is shown in the mock-up. The only thing we need is a photograph of the scene without them, or enough of the background to work from.
Three to five weeks of painting plus three to five business days in transit, with the mock-up inside 24 hours and two progress photographs while it is on the easel. Rush delivery is three weeks including painting for $90. Groups take the longer end of the range, because every extra face needs its own drawing before the composition can settle.
Send whatever photographs you have
One good frame per person is enough to start. We will come back with a composition, a size and a price, and you can decide after you have seen it.