How we work

Your photographs, our house styles, and the best imaging tools we can buy — printed giclée on 200gsm fine-art stock and framed near you.

Four steps, one sitting

1. Upload your photos

One to four photographs of your pet. Ordinary phone photos are fine — the things that help are good even light, the face clearly visible, and the animal filling a decent part of the frame. The more you give us, and the sharper they are, the closer the likeness.

2. Choose your style, size and frame

Each house style is developed here for a particular kind of subject, and built around what makes it worth looking at. Pick the one you like, the size you want, and one of eight frame colours — the colour costs nothing either way. You can add a conservation-grade mount if you'd like a wider border.

A loose watercolour portrait of a cream cat, framed in natural wood with a white mount, hanging in afternoon light

3. See your portraits

A set of portraits comes back in about fifteen seconds. Pick your favourite, or ask for a fresh set — it costs you nothing, and there's no limit worth worrying about.

4. Approve it, then pay

Before anything is charged, we show you the portrait you chose, at the size and in the frame you picked, drawn to scale. What you see is what arrives.

Nothing is charged until you approve a portrait you have seen. If you never find one you like, you never pay.

Then we make it

Your approved portrait is prepared at full print resolution and sent to a professional press near you. It's giclée-printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Art fine-art paper, framed if you asked for a frame, packed and posted.

Days, not weeks — and because it's printed close to you rather than freighted across a border, there are no surprise import charges.

It arrives ready to hang: a cobra hook is fitted before it's packed.

Is it AI?

Yes. We use AI to compose your portrait, and we'd rather tell you than have you find out.

Here's what that actually means, because "AI" covers a lot of ground.

What we do

You give us photographs of your pet. We compose a portrait from them in a house style — one we wrote, tested and judged against our own rubric before we put it on sale. Each style is developed for a particular kind of subject and built around what makes that subject worth looking at.

Then you look at what came back and decide whether it's any good. If it isn't, you ask for another set, and you haven't paid anything.

What it isn't

A filter does the same thing to every photograph you feed it. A template drops your dog into someone else's picture. We're selling you a portrait made from your dog, in a style built for your dog.

So: not a filter. A style here is a written brief about light, mark-making, colour and composition, applied to your particular animal in your particular photograph.

Not a template. Nothing is dropped into a pre-made scene. There's no stock body with your pet's head on it.

It isn't a stock image. Every portrait is made from photographs you supply, and no two are alike — because no two photographs are.

We don't claim a human drew it. Some businesses in this category sell portraits drawn by an illustrator, and that's a genuinely different thing worth paying a different price for. We're not that, and we won't imply we are. You won't find "hand-painted" or "hand-drawn" anywhere on this site describing what you receive.

An expressionist acrylic portrait of a pug, framed in natural wood, hanging on a warm plaster wall

Why we're telling you

Three honest reasons.

It's checkable. Images made this way carry provenance markers. A business claiming otherwise can be caught, and we'd rather not build on something that can be disproved.

The result is the argument. Your portrait is made from your own photographs, in a style developed and tested here. Held against what else is available at this price — a filter, a template, or a stock illustration with a name typed on it — it's less mass-produced, not more.

You can see it before you pay. This is the part that matters most, and it only works because of how we make it. You see the actual portraits, then decide. Nothing is charged until you approve one you've seen. No other part of this page would mean much without it.

What a person does

The styles. Each one is written, tested against real photographs, judged against a rubric and revised until it's worth selling — from a studio on the south coast of Dorset. That's the part that takes weeks, and it's the part that decides whether your portrait is any good.

The printing and framing is done by people too, at a professional press near you.

Why it's quick

A commissioned portrait takes weeks and an email thread — find an artist, brief them, wait, approve a proof, wait again. We take one sitting: same wall, same frame, same care about what actually hangs there.

That isn't a shortcut around the work. The work happened before you arrived, in the styles.

If you'd rather not

That's completely reasonable, and we'd rather you knew now than after it arrives. Businesses selling illustrator-drawn pet portraits are easy to find, and they'll take longer and cost more per portrait. No hard feelings.

One more thing people ask

Can I change my mind after I've approved it? Once you approve, we start making it — a personalised print can't go back on a shelf. That's why the approve step exists and why it's as accurate as we can make it. If something arrives damaged or wrong, that's different and we'll put it right: email hello@printandpane.com with your order number and a photo.