How we work
What you are actually buying, and what happens if it goes wrong
Custom painting is a prepayment for something you cannot see yet. This page is the honest version of how that works here — including the parts that are not in your favour.
Who paints it
A small studio, not a marketplace. The person who reads your photograph is the person who paints the canvas, and each commission is painted by one hand from underpainting to varnish — a painting finished by a second painter looks like a painting finished by a second painter.
We work only from photographs, and we say no more often than customers expect. If a photograph cannot carry the size you want, you will hear that before you pay, along with the smaller canvas that would work. Taking the order and hoping is how this trade produces disappointed people.
Who you are buying from
SeekArt is operated by Shenzhen Adam Art Co., Ltd., a registered painting company in Shenzhen, China, working out of Dafen — the district the world's oil paintings come from. Payments go to the company by card or PayPal with a proper invoice, never to a personal account. Write to [email protected] and ask for the company details on letterhead if you want them in writing before you commit; a real company answers that request the same day.
The four checkpoints
Every commission passes four approval points. What matters is knowing which decisions are still open at each one, because a studio that lets you change anything at any time is not being generous — it is being vague about when your money buys what.
| Checkpoint | What you can change | What it is too late for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The mock-up Within 24 hours of order | Size, crop, composition, background, style. | After approval, changing the composition means starting again — that is a new commission. |
| 2. First progress photo Around week two | Colour direction, background value, whether the likeness is landing. | Anything structural. Faces are still wet and easy to correct. |
| 3. Second progress photo Around week four | Small adjustments: a collar, a highlight, the width of a smile. | Moving a figure or changing the canvas size. |
| 4. Finished canvas Before dispatch | One free round of adjustments, made before varnishing. | Anything that requires repainting a dry, varnished surface. |
What you pay, and when
The price on the page is the price. It is set by canvas size and the number of subjects, and it does not move because of the occasion, the deadline or how much detail you ask for. Framing and old-photo restoration are the only additions, and both are quoted before you commit.
Card or PayPal in US dollars, with a real invoice. Commissions over roughly $1,000 can be split 50% to begin and 50% before dispatch. No personal bank accounts, no cryptocurrency, no "friends and family" transfers — if a studio asks for any of those, leave.
If something goes wrong
| Damaged in transit | Photograph the parcel and the canvas within seven days, email us. We repaint or refund in full and handle the insurance claim ourselves. |
|---|---|
| Does not match the mock-up you approved | We repaint it. The mock-up is the agreement, so this is our cost, not yours. |
| You change your mind before painting starts | Full refund of the deposit, no argument. Nothing has been spent except the mock-up. |
| You change your mind after it is painted | A commission is made for you and cannot be resold, so it is not returnable. This is why the four checkpoints exist — the decision points are all before the paint. |
| An original painting, already painted | 14 days to return it from delivery, in the condition it arrived. |
| A print or a reproduction you ordered by mistake | 14 days, same condition. Tell us before you frame it. |
What we will not do
- Copy a living artist, or anyone whose work is still in copyright. This is not caution, it is law: a painting made from a photograph is a derivative work, and a reproduction of a protected painting is a copy.
- Promise a three-day oil painting. Oil dries by oxidation. Anyone shipping a hand-painted 24 × 36 in in 72 hours is shipping a print or a machine copy.
- Under-declare a parcel for customs. Parcels that are under-declared get held, returned or destroyed, and the loss lands on the buyer.
- Paint from a photograph you do not have the rights to. Wedding photographs belong to the photographer; a print release usually covers printing, not painting.
- Use your family's faces in advertising without asking. Portfolio use is opt-out, and we will honour the opt-out without a discussion.
How to check us before you pay
Three questions, all of which a real studio answers in a day and a reseller cannot answer at all: a raking-light photograph of a recent canvas; the mock-up for your photograph at your size, before payment; and the exact finished dimensions in writing, so the framer's quote is real.
If any answer feels evasive, do not send a deposit. There are enough studios that the only reason to accept a vague one is impatience, and impatience is how people end up with a canvas print in a frame.
Questions
Questions about how we work
Ask for two things before you pay anything: a photograph of a recent canvas taken at a raking angle, so you can see brush ridges and canvas texture rather than a flat print, and the digital mock-up for your own photograph at your own size. A reseller cannot produce the second one, because they are not the ones who will paint it.
You see it before it ships, with one free round of adjustments. If it does not match the mock-up you approved, we repaint it at our cost. What we cannot do is refund a finished commission because the subject's expression is not to a family member's taste after approval — which is exactly what the four checkpoints are for.
Card or PayPal, in US dollars, with a proper invoice. Larger commissions can be split 50% to begin and 50% before dispatch. We never ask for a transfer to a personal account, and we never ask for the full amount before you have seen a mock-up.
No. That rules out most twentieth-century and all living artists. Works in the public domain — roughly, artists who died more than seventy years ago in most jurisdictions — we can copy openly, and every reproduction ships with a certificate stating that it is a modern copy.
They are used to paint the commission and nothing else. We do not sell them, and we do not use them in advertising without asking. If you would rather the finished painting did not appear in our portfolio at all, say so when you order and it will not.
Read the small print, in full
- Commission terms — what the deposit covers, copyright, revisions
- Shipping & returns — packing, transit times, damage claims
- FAQ — the twenty questions we are asked most
- Wall-size guide — what actually fits, before you choose a canvas
Ask us something awkward
Deposits, deadlines, whether a photograph is good enough — ask before you pay, not after.