How to commission a portrait of a child (without a photoshoot)

Children are the easiest subjects to love and the hardest to photograph on purpose. They do not sit, they do not hold a smile, and by the time the camera is ready they have grown. Three decisions decide the result: the age you paint, the photograph you paint from, and the canvas you put it on — with real sizes, real prices and the mistakes that turn a charming painting into an awkward one.

The age comes before the size

A portrait fixes one face at one moment. With adults that is simple. With children it is a decision with a shelf life, because the face you commission at two is not the face you have at four. There is no correct age, only three windows that behave differently.

Under two: paint the face you can actually see

Babies change faster than any other subject. A nine-month-old and an eighteen-month-old share almost no facial structure: the cheeks thin, the nose defines, the eyes move from round to set. If you commission at six months, you are painting a baby who will be gone by the time the canvas arrives. That is not a reason to wait until school age, only to accept the painting as a record of one month — and to write that month on the back.

Three to seven: the window most commissions use

Between three and seven the face is stable enough to recognise for years and expressive enough to be worth painting. This is the age band behind most of the child portraits we paint. It is also the age at which a child will sit for four minutes if something interesting is happening behind you, which is all the time a photograph needs.

Eight and up: ask them first

Older children have opinions about their own face, and they are usually right. A ten-year-old who hates the photograph will hate the painting, and it will hang in a house they live in. Show them the two or three candidate images and let them choose. It costs nothing and removes the most common reason a portrait of an older child gets taken down.

How to photograph a child in twenty minutes

You do not need a studio. You need one window, one wall and a child who has forgotten the camera exists. Six rules do most of the work.

• Get to their eye level. Every photograph taken from adult standing height looks down on a child, shortens the body and flattens the face. Kneel, or sit on the floor.
• Stand six to eight feet away. A phone held at 18 inches gives you a large nose and small ears. Step back and use the 2× lens, which is roughly a 50 mm view and close to how people see.
• Use one window, no flash. Side light from a window models the cheeks and the bridge of the nose. Direct flash removes every plane on a small face and adds a shadow behind the head.
• Shoot a burst, not a pose. Hold the shutter while they talk, eat or build something. Out of 300 frames, three will be sharp and unposed, and those three are the ones a painter can use.
• Skip “say cheese”. The instructed smile is a shape, not an expression. Ask a question they care about instead — what the dog is doing, whether the tower will fall — and photograph the answer.
• Stop at twenty minutes. A tired child photographs like a tired child. Two short sessions on different days beat one long one.

Resolution matters more than your phone’s megapixel count. A face needs roughly 600 pixels across to keep eyelashes and the lip line; below about 400 we are inventing detail, and invention on a child’s face reads as a stranger. The reference photo guide covers file sizes, lighting direction and what to send in full.

How many faces, and how big

The rule of thumb from adult portraits holds here and matters more: a head needs about two inches of height on the finished canvas to read across a room, and three inches to look like a portrait rather than a photograph in oil. Children’s heads are smaller than adults’, so the same canvas holds fewer of them comfortably.

Two children on a 16 × 20 in canvas gives each head about 2.5 inches, which works. Four on the same canvas gives each about 1.5 inches, which does not — it becomes a school photograph with brushstrokes. For four siblings, two 16 × 20 in canvases hung as a pair cost $778 and will look better than one 24 × 36 in at $1,560. The size guide works through the wall arithmetic in detail.

What it costs, in full

Prices do not change with the age of the child, the style, or the number of photographs you send. They change with two things only: canvas size and the number of faces.

• One child: $189 at 8 × 10 in up to $789 at 24 × 36 in; $389 at the 16 × 20 in default.
• Two children: $379 at 12 × 16 in, $499 at 16 × 20 in, $699 at 20 × 24 in, $1,059 at 24 × 36 in.
• Three children: $619 at 16 × 20 in, $849 at 20 × 24 in, $1,290 at 24 × 36 in. Four or more: $749, $1,029 and $1,560 at the same three sizes.

Shipping is free and tracked, worldwide; paintings travel rolled in a rigid tube and are stretched by a local framer. Restoration or compositing two photographs into one costs $60–$70 extra. Rush painting is $90 and shortens the three-to-five-week studio time, not the transit. The full grid sits on the custom portraits page — there is no quote form between you and a price.

Clothing and background: what still looks right in twenty years

A child’s portrait is usually commissioned to outlast the child’s childhood, so the two things that date fastest deserve a decision. Clothing with a cartoon character, a slogan or a team logo pins the painting to a year. Plain, mid-tone clothes — a knitted jumper, a linen shirt, a simple dress — let the face carry the picture and stay neutral on a wall in 2046.

• Mid-tone, not white. All-white clothing competes with the brightest highlight in the face, and the painter ends up painting a shirt instead of a child.
• No busy prints. A dense floral or stripe gets simplified into texture at brush level; it will look like an error rather than a pattern.
• Low-contrast background. A plain wall, a soft hedge, a doorway. Party banners and toys behind the head pull attention away from the eyes.
• Give the hands something to do. A brush, a shell, a corner of a blanket — otherwise the child stands at attention.

If you are sending several photographs, send one for the face and one for the clothes. Putting a favourite jumper on a better-lit face is included, not charged as a second subject.

Where a child’s portrait actually hangs

The standard hanging line — centre of the canvas 57 to 60 inches from the floor — is calculated for adult eyes. In a child’s room the painting should sit lower, with the centre at roughly 40 to 48 inches, so a six-year-old can look at it straight on. In a hallway or living room, use the adult line.

• Above a cot or bed: nothing heavy, nothing with glass. An oil on canvas is light, but the fixing is the risk, not the painting.
• Out of direct sun. A window that throws light across the canvas for four hours a day will fade the reds first; move it or fit a blind.
• Not above a radiator or fireplace. Dry heat over years makes the canvas brittle and the paint film crack.
• One canvas per wall. A child’s portrait hung beside four framed snaps loses its authority; give it the wall.

The framing and hanging guide covers D-rings, wire gauge and the hardware that holds a larger canvas safely. For a nursery, a gallery-wrapped canvas with no frame at all is often the right answer: nothing to knock, nothing to break.

Dates, growth and the note on the back

Painting takes three to five weeks; transit takes three to five business days. For a birthday that means ordering six weeks ahead, and for a Christmas gift, mid-November — see the process page.

One habit is worth adopting. Write the child’s name, the month and year the reference photograph was taken, and the city on the back of the stretcher, in pencil. In thirty years that note is the difference between an heirloom and an anonymous portrait of somebody’s child. Families often order a second portrait years later and hang the two as a pair — and that only works if the dates are recorded.

Five things that go wrong

1. Photographing in a group and cropping one face out. A face lifted from a family snapshot is usually 300–400 pixels wide. It will paint, but it will not be sharp.
2. Choosing the canvas before measuring the wall. A 24 × 36 in canvas over a small chest of drawers looks like a mistake no matter how good the painting is.
3. Asking for an open smile from a photo where the teeth are in shadow. Send one where they are lit, or accept a closed mouth.
4. Mixing years. A face from last summer and a body from three winters ago produces a child who never existed. Keep the reference to one season.
5. Ordering for a date you cannot meet. Rush painting is $90; a missed third birthday is not recoverable.

The short version

• Three to seven is the most stable age to paint; under two, accept that you are recording a specific month.
• Shoot at eye level, six to eight feet back, in window light, in burst mode, for twenty minutes.
• 600 pixels across the face is the working minimum. Below 400, choose a smaller canvas instead.
• One child at 16 × 20 in is $389 and is the size most families choose; two at the same size is $499.
• Order six weeks before the date, and write the month and year on the back of the stretcher.

Send the photographs, the child’s age and a picture of the wall to the quote page and you will get a recommended canvas, a fixed price and an honest answer on whether your favourite image is good enough — usually within 24 hours.