I paint a lot of people, but every so often a pet portrait commission comes in, and this Cocker Spaniel is one I’ve been meaning to write about since I finished it.
Where it started
The reference photo was a good one to work from — soft light, the ears falling forward, that particular half-alert look spaniels get when something’s happening just out of frame. That’s usually what decides whether a pet portrait works or not. Not the breed, not the pose really, just whether there’s something specific in the eyes I can hold onto while I paint.
The painting process
I work the same way for a pet portrait commission as I do for a person — in oil, built up over several sessions rather than finished in one sitting. With fur there’s an extra layer of patience involved. You can’t rush the coat or it goes flat and stiff, more like a diagram of a dog than an actual dog. I block in the broad shapes and tone first, then go back in over a few sittings to work the individual strands and the softer transitions where the fur catches the light.
Colour, texture and expression
Spaniel colouring is deceptive. From a distance it reads as a fairly even golden-brown, but up close there’s a lot going on — warmer ochres where the light hits, cooler shadow tones underneath the ears, almost a violet-grey in places. Getting the texture of the ears right matters too, since that’s where a lot of a spaniel’s character sits. Wavy, a bit heavy, catching the light differently to the shorter fur on the face. The eyes are the last thing I do, always, because everything else in the painting is really just building up to them.
Why pet portraits become treasured keepsakes
People photograph their pets constantly, but a hand-painted portrait sits differently in a room than a photo does. It’s slower to make, so it ends up feeling slower to look at as well — something you actually stop in front of rather than scroll past. For a lot of people commissioning one, it’s less about a perfect likeness and more about having something that holds a particular moment or a particular animal a bit more permanently than a phone camera roll does.
A gift that means something
I get pet portrait commissions for all sorts of occasions — birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, someone settling into life with a new dog or cat, and sometimes as a memorial for a pet that’s no longer around. That last one is always the commission I take most care over. A painting doesn’t replace a photo album, but it does something a photo can’t quite manage — it makes the animal feel present in the room rather than just remembered.
Commissioning your own
If you’ve got a dog, cat, horse, bird or any other much-loved animal you’d like painted, have a look at the Pet Portrait Commission page for sizes and pricing, or browse more of my work on the Portraits page first. A5 starts at £100, framed and ready to hang, with turnaround normally around two weeks.