How to commission a pet memorial portrait: choosing the photo, the size and the words

A pet memorial portrait is the commission people put off the longest and are most glad they finally ordered. It is also the one where the reference photograph is worst: usually a phone snapshot taken years ago, half the animal in shadow, and the only picture you would never delete. That is workable. What actually decides whether the painting becomes the animal you remember is the photo, the size, and three small decisions that are hard to undo later.

Why a memorial is a different kind of commission

Four things separate it from an ordinary gift portrait, and each one changes what you should do first.

• The reference is usually the weakest you will ever send. Nobody photographs a dog expecting it to be the last picture. Expect to send several imperfect ones instead of one good one.
• There is no deadline, which is the hard part. A birthday forces a decision; here it keeps sliding. Most of our memorial customers order between four and eighteen months after the loss, and plenty order from a photograph taken a decade ago.
• The size matters more, not less. The painting goes on a main wall you walk past daily. Too big and it dominates the room; too small and it reads as a keepsake rather than a portrait.
• Words are the risk. A painted name, dates or quotation is where commemorative art most often ages badly. There is a better way, further down.

Choosing the photo: send three to five, not one

The instinct is to find the single perfect picture and send only that. Resist it. Send the best frames you have, even the flawed ones, and let the studio choose — a painter can see something in a snapshot that you cannot, and the eye that matters is the one deciding how the fur catches light.

What makes a photograph paint well

• Sharp eyes. Everything else can be rebuilt from another frame; if the eye is a smudge, the likeness is a guess. This is the one non-negotiable detail.
• Daylight, not flash. Flash flattens fur into one tone and blooms a black nose. Window light keeps the shading that gives the face its shape.
• Long edge of at least 1200 pixels. A modern phone photo is 3000–4000 px — plenty. Scanning a print? 300 dpi. Photographing a print with your phone? Fill the frame, keep the paper flat, avoid glare.
• The natural expression. One ear up, tongue out, head tilted at the sound of a bag rustling — those are the details people recognise. A formal pose is rarely the animal anyone remembers.
• No heavy filters. A warm filter shifts the whole palette and the painter then has to guess which coat colour is real. Send original files, never a screenshot.

When the only photo is a bad one

This is the most common situation and rarely a dead end. Restoration and compositing — removing a crease, rebuilding a faded corner, taking the face from one frame and the pose from another — is routine studio work at $60–$70 on top of the painting, not a special fee.

Two honest limits. A soft or slightly out-of-focus photograph paints fine, because fur and shape survive blur. A photograph where the eye detail is gone entirely — roughly anything under 600 px across the face — cannot be rescued into a true likeness, and a studio that takes your money anyway is selling a generic animal. Ask, and expect a straight answer before you pay.

One pet, or the whole household?

Two patterns come up constantly: the single memorial for one animal, which is straightforward, and the combined portrait — the pet who has died beside the dog still asleep on the sofa, or two animals who were a pair. Both work, and the combined version is often the one that helps most, but it costs more because it is a second full subject, not a copy-paste.

Decide early. Adding a pet later means a new painting, since oil cannot be invisibly extended. If you think a second animal will eventually join the first, commission the canvas that can hold both now — 20 × 24 in or larger, with the space composed in deliberately. Worked examples at these sizes are in the pet portrait gallery.

Published prices, fixed before painting starts — the same table sits on the custom portraits page. The starred 16 × 20 in at $389 for one pet is the most-ordered size in the studio.

What belongs on the canvas — and what does not

Details are what make a memorial convincing, and there is a simple rule: paint what you would still recognise in thirty years, and put the rest on the frame.

• Paint these: the collar and its tag, the worn patch on the blanket, the chair or step the animal claimed, the colour of the nose, the shape of the ear scar.
• Do not paint these: the name, birth and death dates, a quotation, a paw print. Painted lettering is the detail most likely to read wrong — a misspelling caught after varnishing is expensive, and a typeface that looks modern in 2026 can look dated in 2036.
• Engrave them instead. A small brass plate costs roughly $20–$40 at any framer, takes a name and two dates comfortably, and can be re-cut if anything is wrong. It also keeps the painting a painting.

One aesthetic caution: avoid posing the animal as a human — waistcoats, crowns, a chair at the dinner table. It reads as a novelty, and novelty wears off within a year.

Size: the shelf, the wall, or deliberately both

8 × 10 in ($189) is a desk or shelf piece, and the right answer if the portrait will sit with an urn rather than hang. 12 × 16 in ($289) suits a hallway or bedside wall. 16 × 20 in ($389) is the all-purpose size and our suggestion when customers cannot decide — it holds a head and shoulders with real detail and looks at home above a console or chest. 20 × 24 in and above is a main-wall painting: it carries a stairwell or a room above a bed, but the wall has to exist first.

The rule that prevents most disappointments is the two-thirds rule: the canvas should span about two-thirds of the width of the furniture beneath it, centred around 57 in (145 cm) from the floor — average eye level. Above a 60 in sideboard that means a canvas roughly 40 in wide, which lands between 24 × 36 in and 30 × 40 in. Measure the wall and send a phone photo of it with your pet photos: sizing mistakes are far cheaper to fix on paper. The full breakdown by furniture width is in our wall-art sizing guide.

One combination customers often land on: a small 8 × 10 in for the place the animal slept, and a larger canvas for the family room.

What it costs, and what should never be an extra

A hand-painted pet memorial runs from $189 for a single-pet 8 × 10 in study to $2,249 for a 36 × 48 in canvas with three subjects; the typical commission, one animal at 16 × 20 in, is $389. Genuine additions, quoted in writing before anything is painted: restoration and compositing ($60–$70), a second subject, a full background scene such as the garden the animal loved, and rush delivery at $90 to pull a painting into a three-week window.

Four things should never be line items: the digital mock-up you approve before painting begins, the first revision once the canvas is finished, progress photographs during painting, and shipping — canvases travel rolled in a rigid moisture-proof tube, insured and tracked, worldwide, at no extra cost. Import duty or VAT charged by your own country is the one thing no studio can cover. The price logic, including why $40 “hand-painted” listings cannot be real oil, is in our guide to what a pet portrait actually costs.

The timeline, honestly

From an approved composition to your doorstep is five to seven weeks: three to five weeks of painting, layer over dry layer; one to three days for the mock-up and your approval; three to five business days in transit. The painting leg cannot be compressed — oil has to dry between layers, and a canvas rushed through it never quite settles.

The useful insight is that a memorial has no deadline to hit. Use the time: live with two or three candidate photographs for a week, look at them in daylight rather than on a screen at midnight, and send the ones that still stop you. Ordering early after a recent loss is completely fine — the painting does not expire.

If you are giving it to someone else

A memorial portrait is a wonderful gift and an easy one to get wrong, because grief does not run to a schedule. Three rules prevent most of the awkwardness. Ask first, in plain words — some people want the painting immediately, others are not ready. If it is a surprise, pay the deposit and give a card describing the commission rather than a finished canvas nobody asked for. And confirm the spelling of the animal's name before anything is engraved; a wrong brass plate is a small daily irritation on top of a large loss.

Have the finished canvas shipped straight to the recipient, since re-shipping a rolled canvas across a country costs more than the plate. If several family members are splitting the cost, agree who holds the invoice and the deposit — typically 30–50% once the composition is approved, balance before shipping — before any photographs are collected.

How to start

Send three to five photographs — the good, the blurry and the old print you photographed on your phone — to [email protected]. You will get back a fixed price, a size recommendation for your wall, and an honest verdict on the source, usually within 24 hours, and nothing is charged until you approve both. If you would rather see numbers first, get a fixed price for your exact size and subjects on the quote page, or tell us about the animal through the commission form. Finished pet commissions are in the pet gallery, and the published table is on the custom portraits page.