How to choose the right photo for an oil portrait commission

The photograph you send us is the only thing the painter has to work from. They can't ask the dog to move into better light. They can't ask a passed loved one to turn slightly. Whatever the photo shows is what gets painted.

Almost every commission that disappoints traces back to the photo, not the painter. This guide gives you a clear checklist to pick — or take — a photo that produces a painting you'll love.

What makes a great reference photo

Light on the face, not behind it

Soft, even light from the front or side is ideal. Backlit subjects (the sun behind them, a bright window behind them) are silhouetted in the photo, and the painter has to invent the face.

If you only have a backlit photo and that's the only one of a deceased relative, send it anyway — we can sometimes work miracles — but you'll get a much closer likeness from a frontlit shot.

Sharp focus and high resolution

The painter looks at fine detail: the catch-lights in the eyes, the way the cheekbone catches light, individual hairs near the temples. A blurry, low-resolution photo loses all of that.

Practical rule: if you zoom in on the face on your phone screen and it looks pixelated, the painter is going to paint a guess. Send a higher-resolution version if you can find one.

Shoulders and head, or a clearly defined crop

The most successful portraits are head-and-shoulders or three-quarter (head-to-waist) compositions. Full-body photos of small subjects (children, pets) often produce paintings where the face is too small to read at viewing distance.

If you want the whole body in the painting, that's fine — choose a larger size (24×36″ or up) so the face still has presence.

Subject filling at least a third of the frame

Tiny subject in a busy scene = bad reference. The painter spends most of the work on the subject's face; if that face is 50 pixels wide in your photo, the result will be approximate.

Eyes visible

A photograph where the subject is looking down or away from camera makes a lovely painting in some moods, but not in most. For most family/pet portraits, eyes meeting the camera produce the most engaging result.

Photos to avoid (and what to do instead)

Problem	Why it's a problem	Fix
Heavy filters / Instagram presets	Distorts skin tones, the painter copies the distortion	Send the original, unedited shot
Phone portrait-mode with blurry background	The blur is in the photo's data, painter has nothing to reference for the background	Send a non-portrait-mode version, or specify a plain background in your order
Selfies from below	Distorted facial proportions (large nose, small forehead) get painted accurately	Take or find a photo at eye level
Mid-action shots (eating, talking)	Mouth open mid-word looks awkward when frozen on canvas	Pick a calm, settled expression
Group photos where some faces are tiny	Each face needs enough pixels to paint accurately	Either provide individual close-ups of each face, or commission a larger size
Black and white photos of someone you remember in colour	The painter has to guess every colour — eye colour, hair colour, skin tone	Send any colour reference (even a different photo) so we know

Combining multiple photos

If you have one great photo of a face and another great photo of a body or scene — for instance, a beautiful close-up of a passed grandparent and a separate photo of them in a setting they loved — we can combine them. Send both, with a note about which is the face reference and which is the body/scene reference.

We do this often for memorial commissions and family portraits where one person was missing from the original group photo.

Old, damaged, or low-resolution photos

We work from old and damaged photos all the time — wedding photos from the 1950s, baby photos before digital cameras, photos with creases or fading. The painter restores and idealises as part of the work. Don't worry that an old photo is too poor to use; send it anyway.

What we can't do: invent a face from a photo where the face is too small, too blurry, or too obscured to read. If the only photo you have is genuinely unusable, we'll tell you before painting starts and refund any deposit.

Sending photos to us

When you commission, you can attach photos directly in the form. We accept JPG, PNG, HEIC, and PDF. There's no size limit — bigger files are better.

If you've got many candidate photos and aren't sure which is best, send them all and we'll tell you which one will paint best.

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