Commission A Portrait: The Artist’s Advice
There are many reasons that someone might want to commission a portrait. They can range from a heartfelt memorial image of a departed loved one to a slightly cheeky gift that shows them decked out in historical costume. Whatever the reason you’re looking to commission a painting, there are a few tips and tricks that can help both you and your artist get the most out of the process.
How to Commission A Portrait
If you’ve decided that a customized painting is the best gift for your loved one, the next logical step is to start wondering how to commission a painting. It’s a lot easier than it used to be! In fact, the whole portrait commissioning process has been streamlined by the invention of digital tools to the point where you can have your own unique work of art in just a couple of days. It really is easy to have a portrait artist create something unique for you.
Commissioning a Renaissance Portrait
A Renaissance portrait takes your photo and drops the subject into an oil painting straight out of a royal court, crown, cape, and all. There are more than 70 costumes to choose from, everything from a king's robes to a general's uniform, so the style can match the person as much as the occasion. It works well as a fun, cheeky gift, but it holds up just as well as something more serious, like a memorial piece for someone who's passed. Read more about why Renaissance portraits carry that kind of emotional weight. Send in a clear photo of the face, pick the costume, and the rest is up to the artist.
Commissioning a House Portrait
A house portrait works a little differently than a person's portrait. There's no face to get right, but there's still a lot riding on the photo you send in. A shot taken straight on, in daylight, with the whole front of the house in frame, gives the artist the most to work with. Photos taken at an angle or at dusk can still work, they just mean more back and forth on the proof before it's right. If the house has something worth keeping, a porch swing, a particular tree, the numbers on the mailbox, mention it. Small details like that are usually what make someone recognize the place instantly. You can commission a house portrait the same way you'd commission any other piece, just send over the photo and tell us what matters about it.
Commissioning a Royal Pet Portrait
This one is exactly what it sounds like: your dog or cat, painted in the same style as a Renaissance monarch. Pick a costume, a general's uniform, a queen's gown, a knight's armor, upload a clear photo of your pet's face, and the artist paints them into it. It tends to work best when the costume matches the pet's actual personality. The cat who acts like she owns the house makes an obvious duchess. You'll get a proof to approve before anything's finalized, so there's room to ask for changes before it's done. Browse the full Royal Pet Portraits collection to see the costume options.
How Much Does It Cost To Commission A Portrait?
If you’ve never commissioned portraits before, you might be forgiven for thinking that fine art is out of your price range. Art has a reputation as a refined, expensive thing but that’s never really been the case— even the great masters of the Renaissance charged a lot less than you’d think— and it certainly isn’t now.
Making use of modern tools has dramatically cut the cost of portrait artist commissions. Rather than having the commissioners pose for hours, they can work from a reference photo, making capturing a moment even easier. Expensive oils and tools have been replaced with digital equivalents. Perhaps best of all, a simple mistake can be erased with a single stroke of the artist’s pen rather than hours of careful remedial work, reducing the time they have to charge you hugely.
The cost will vary depending on the product you’re commissioning; a digital file will be cheaper than a canvas print, but with prices ranging between around $40 and $250 none of them are likely to break the bank. That’s really pretty reasonable for an original painting produced by real artists in just a few days!
Other factors that will influence the price of your commissioned portraits include things like how many people are shown, whether the artist is working with a premade template or working on a totally new image. A full-size canvas showing a family group will cost more than a digital image of a single person, but even the most expensive versions are still a lot more affordable than what commissioning a painting used to cost.
So, how much does it cost to commission a portrait? A lot less than you probably thought.
Where to Commission Paintings?
Call us biased, but we think you’re already in the perfect place to find your portrait artist. We’re not saying that there aren’t loads of worthy portrait painters out there— there absolutely are — but we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to make the process quicker, easier, and cost a lot less without compromising on the final results.
The main way that Pixels Photo Art stands out from the field is that we’ve got a diverse collection of customizable painting templates for you to choose from. These are all premade and hand-painted, just like the face of your commissioned portrait. This method of working allows us to focus on getting the character of the subject just right by working on their face. It also means that we can work faster than many of our competitors and means you pay significantly less without having to compromise on the quality of your portrait. We really are the obvious choice when you choose an artist
Conclusion
It’s no mystery that Renaissance paintings have evolved over time, and today, commissioning portraits is easier and more affordable than ever. Taking advantage of the tools that modern technology has given artists means that your final piece could be with you in as little as three days: the smallest delivery window there has ever been!
There are lots of styles to choose from when you decide to commission a portrait and they’ll all stand the test of time. So, what’s stopping you from having your own personal oil portrait commissioned today?