Traditional Oil Portraits
To keep cost of our oil portraits down, we do not have sittings with the artists, but rather work from an ordinary photograph. If you have a photo you want the oil portrait based on, but there are elements within that photo which you would like to change - the clothes worn by the subject for example, then our artists can certainly help. This style works particularly well with children, with a picture making a great present for any parent or grandparent.

Step 1 - The Photo
The first step will be for us to take a look at your photo and make sure we can work with it. For the best results we need to work from a clear, well lit and in focus photo. The person's face should fill up most of the actual photo and the colour of the eyes should be visible. Remember the artist only has the photo to work from, so the clearer the picture the more we can pick up on the texture of the skin, the colour of the eyes etc. As the portrait will be hanging on your walls for many years to come, it really is worth finding the best possible photo for the artist to work from. See examples of the sort of photo we need to create the best possible portrait.

Step 2 - Composition and colours
Having decided with you on the photo to use, we would then move on to the issue of composition and colours.

Composition
This is essentially about where the head sits within the canvas. To help decide on the composition of the picture we will send back a number of crops of your photo for you to consider. Some will be close crops, concentrating very much on the face, with others showing the full face and more background.

Colours
With the traditional oil portraits, this is really about the sort of background you want to appear in the portrait. It may well be that you are happy with the actual background in the photograph itself, or it may be that some sort of broken colour would be more appropriate. The artist will of course be happy to make suggestions. Once we have decided with you on the composition and background you would like to see, our artist starts work.

Step 3 - Your portrait
About 3 / 4 weeks later, we will then email you back a photo of the work in progress. This gives you the opportunity to feedback to us and we are happy to make any amendments that are needed. Only when you are completely happy with the portrait is it then framed according to your request, packed up and despatched to you. In all the process should take about 4 - 6 weeks, but due to the nature of the medium, can sometimes take a little longer.