Commission - Information

I paint what I see and I assure an excellent likeness of the photos you provide.

You will need to provide high quality photo which needs to be approved and agreed by the artist before work is commissioned. Photo shoots local to the artist can be arranged subject to an agreed fee.

• The best photos are achieved in natural daylight or by a large window.  This ensures true colours and detail are captured
• Avoid direct sunlight or shady corners as both can make the end picture too bright or dark in places.  Sunshine can also make your subject squint or create dark shadows which takes away from the detail we want to achieve.  Choose a bright but overcast day ideally and with the sun behind you.
• Use a High Definition/Resolution camera [even phone cameras have good quality settings on them these days] and take as many picture as you possibly can; one of them will be what you want.  
• Get in as close as you can, don't leave lots of background behind the subject unless you want this incorporated into the picture
• Take the picture at the subjects level if you can as this prevent weird distortion
• Have someone to help you - if the subject is a pet, take treats or a favourite toy and try to let the other person encourage your pet to pose whilst you click away...keep clicking...keep clicking!!
• When you think you have the photo you want - just take a bit more time taking some really close up photos of feature like eyes, mouth - this really helps me to get the colours right and to capture the personality and soul of your subject
• We can draw multiple subjects in one picture and these photos can be taken separately but remember they have to work.  So the lighting and colours need to be right and the focal-line has to be complimentary.  So both looking at the lens or both looking away - if one is looking up and the other down, that's unlikely to work.  
• If required, I can provide a concept/mock-up of what your portrait will look like before we make a start on it.

The quality of the picture is very important.......remember I can only recreate what I can see in terms of colour, quality and detail.  I will decline to work from poor quality photos as they will not enable me to do justice to your picture.