Family Portraits, Hand-Painted From Your Photographs

A family portrait is the piece most likely to be on the wall for fifty years, and the drawing stage is where it is decided. From your photographs — one group photo, or one photo per person — we draft the arrangement: who stands where, the heights of the heads, which way each person turns, where the light comes from. You see that sketch and approve or change it before any paint goes down. Only then does the painter start.

Combining photographs

Most family portraits are built from several photographs, because the best photo of each person is rarely the same photo. We match the scale of the heads, bring the eye lines into a natural relationship, and light everyone from the same side so the group reads as a single moment rather than a collage. Clothing can be taken from the photos or simplified to a palette that sits together; most families ask for the clothes they were actually wearing.

Someone who has passed can be painted into the group from an older photograph, at the age you choose. We are careful and unhurried about this, and it is one of the most common reasons families commission us.

Faces, skin and likeness

Skin is painted in thin, warm layers with the cool halftones left visible at the temples, the jaw and around the eyes — this is what keeps painted faces looking like flesh rather than plastic. Each face is a separate likeness to draw, paint and check; the digital proof is where you tell us if a nose is a fraction too long or a smile not quite theirs, and the painter adjusts before varnish.

Darker skin tones are painted with the same range of warm and cool light and need a photograph with the face properly exposed; the photo guide shows what helps.

Mediums and sizes

Acrylic on canvas is the default and the most durable; acrylic gives the same look with faster drying when a date is close. Charcoal and pencil on paper suit a quieter, more drawn family piece and are shipped flat. Group portraits are priced by size, number of subjects, detail level and medium, and we recommend a size when we quote — every face should be at least the size of a fist.

Photographers and designers order family portraits for their own clients at trade pricing from one piece.