Grandparent portraits
A portrait of your grandparents, from the photographs
Painted from the print on the sideboard, the ones in the album, and the phone snap somebody took last Christmas.
Grandparent portraits arrive in a mixture of formats: a studio print from 1968 with a deckled edge, a photograph of the two of them at a golden wedding, and a phone snap from last Sunday in which Grandpa is looking at the television. All three are useful, and the painting is usually built from more than one. What matters is deciding which photograph holds the face you actually want to keep. Often it is not the framed one. It is a candid at a kitchen table, taken in daylight, where the person is not performing for the camera and the eyes are doing something.
The instruction we get most often is a version of 'can you make him look a bit younger'. We can take out a hearing aid, soften a hospital bracelet, remove a tube — practical things that were never part of the person. We will not smooth the face. A face at eighty is a record of eighty years, and a portrait that airbrushes it is a portrait of nobody. What we do instead is paint the face in good light, which is the honest way to make somebody look well.
Wrinkles are the portrait
Age is structure, not texture: the lines around the mouth come from the shape of the jaw and the way the lips have held for decades, and the folds at the eyes come from the cheek pushing up when the person laughs. Painted as fine lines drawn over smooth skin they look like cracks in varnish. Painted as planes — a slightly cooler, slightly darker shape beside a raised one — they read as a face.
This is where a cheap portrait shows itself. A studio working fast will airbrush the face into evenness and then draw a few lines back in, which produces the waxy look people recognise but cannot name. We refuse it for a practical reason rather than a sentimental one: the likeness lives in those planes, and removing them removes the person along with the age. The test is simple: if the face in the painting could be moved onto somebody else's body without anyone noticing, it was never a portrait to begin with.
Hands, rings and glasses
Hands are the second portrait. Age shows on the back of a hand — tendons, veins, spots, the way the skin lifts — and the ring is often the point of the whole commission: a wedding band worn thin, a signet from a parent. We paint hands when the photograph gives us hands, and we will ask for a close-up, because hands in a group photograph are usually four pixels wide.
Glasses need their own decision. Lenses bend the line of the cheek behind them, the frame casts a shadow, and a photograph taken with flash puts a white rectangle where the eye should be. Send a photograph without glasses if one exists, or one taken at an angle where the reflection does not sit over the pupil. Painting an eye through a reflection is guessing, and it shows.
Posture is the last thing, and it decides whether the result reads as a person or a monument. Most grandparents sit slightly forward with the shoulders rounded and the hands in the lap, and a painter who squares those shoulders into a formal portrait produces somebody the family does not quite recognise. Keep the slump. That is where the years of sitting in that particular chair are stored.
Working from a photograph taken fifty years ago
Old prints are scanned rather than copied on a phone: a flatbed at 600 dpi keeps the grain and the detail that a phone copy loses to glare. If all you have is a print, a phone photograph of it taken in daylight, straight on, with no flash and none of your own shadow across it, is a workable second best. Send the file at full size, not through a messaging app.
Restoration is $60–$70 and happens before painting: creases, tears, fading and colour cast are corrected digitally, and you approve that version. What restoration cannot do is recover detail the print never held. A face at the back of a 1962 wedding group stays soft, and at 16 × 20 in that softness becomes visible, so we tell you the ceiling instead of painting over it.
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
$189 for 8 × 10 in, $289 for 12 × 16 in and $389 for the 16 × 20 in that most people choose for a single figure. Two grandparents on one canvas is a two-subject price, and grandchildren are a subject each. Shipping is free worldwide and restoration of an old print is $60–$70.
We can remove what was temporary — a hospital bracelet, a tube, a hearing aid, a harsh shadow — and we can choose a photograph from before an illness if one exists. We will not smooth away the structure of an eighty-year-old face, because that structure is where the likeness lives and the family always sees the difference.
Often yes, at 12 × 16 in or below. Send a flatbed scan at 600 dpi if you can, or a straight, glare-free phone copy at full size. Restoration is $60–$70 and you approve it before painting. If the face is too small to hold at the size you want, we will say so before you pay anything.
Yes, and it is common. Each additional person is a subject on the price table, and the composition is arranged by height, with the tallest at the back. A grandparent photographed in 1990 and a grandchild photographed last year can share a canvas, provided the light is unified — that is what the mock-up is for.
Three to five weeks of painting plus three to five business days in transit, with a mock-up inside 24 hours and two progress photographs while it is on the easel. Rush delivery is three weeks including painting for $90. Restoration, when it is needed, adds a few days before the mock-up reaches you.
Send the family photographs
Send the print, the album page, the phone snap — all of it. We will tell you which one holds the face and what it costs to paint it properly.