Custom Portrait Paintings from Photos: Family, Couples, Memorial, Executive

We paint portraits by hand from your photos, in our studio in Dafen Art Village, Shenzhen. Acrylic on canvas is standard and oil is available on request. Nothing is printed. We can combine people from different photos into one painting, work from an old or faded photo of someone who has passed, and paint at any size, from a small canvas for a desk to a full-length boardroom portrait. Orders of 1 to 5 paintings take 7 to 10 business days. We send progress photos while we paint so you can check the likeness early, then photos of the finished canvas. Nothing leaves the studio until you approve it.

Portraits we paint

Most enquiries are one of these five.

Photos that work, and how many to send

• Send more than one. Three to eight photos of each person. One sets the pose, the rest show the face from other angles.
• The eyes must be sharp. If the eyes are in focus, the likeness usually follows. Blurry eyes are the most common problem.
• Daylight beats flash. Window light shows the real shape of the face. A flash flattens it and hides skin tone.
• Send the original file from the phone or camera, not a screenshot of a screenshot.
• Show us what matters. A ring, a uniform badge, a favorite sweater, their eye color.

You do not need studio photography. Phone photos taken outdoors are often the best reference we get. If you are unsure a picture is usable, send it through the quote form and we will tell you plainly. Our photo to painting page covers houses and landscapes.

Bringing people from different photos into one portrait

This is our most common portrait request and a normal job for us. Each person is painted from their own best photo, then everyone is composed into one scene with a single light source, one background and one scale, so the result reads as one moment, not a collage.

It is how we paint a grandparent who never met the grandchildren into the same picture, a son posted overseas, or a couple whose only good photos were taken years apart. Tell us who stands where, who is seated, and roughly how old each person should look.

Memorial portraits from an old photo

If you are ordering a portrait of someone who has died, keep your message short. Send the photos you have and one line about who they were. That is enough.

Old photos are usually workable. Faded color, a crease, a small wallet print, a group photo where the person appears once at the edge. Our painters read the bone structure and the expression from what is there, and we ask about anything the photo cannot tell us, such as true eye color or hair color before it grayed. If the photo is black and white, tell us the colors or let us choose a soft neutral palette.

You see the face early, while it is easy to change. If something is not right, say so and we rework it.

What you can change in the picture

• Background. Plain color, a dark classical ground, a garden, or the wall color of the room it will hang in.
• Clothing. Change a shirt color, swap casual clothes for formal dress, add a uniform, a graduation gown or traditional dress.
• People and objects. Remove someone from the frame, remove a cluttered table, add a person from another photo, add a pet.
• Personal details. An instrument, a book, a medal, a wedding ring, the dog at their feet.
• Dress and setting to suit your household. If modest dress, covered hair or a particular setting matters to you, say so in the brief and we paint it that way.

Size, medium and finish

Portraits go wrong more often from bad sizing than from bad painting. For a desk or bedside, 24 by 20 inches. For a hallway or stair wall, 30 by 24 or 36 by 24 inches. Over a fireplace or sofa, aim for about two thirds the width of the mantel or sofa, usually between 36 by 48 and 48 by 60 inches. For a boardroom or lobby, 48 by 36 inches is the smallest that holds the room, and 60 by 40 or 72 by 48 inches reads from across a hall. See extra large paintings for big walls.

We paint in acrylic unless you ask for oil. Both are hand painted on canvas, premium linen. Oil dries slowly between layers, so an oil portrait takes longer. Brushwork is your choice too: smooth and traditional, loose and impressionist, or thick palette-knife texture. Point at whichever painting on this page looks closest and we follow it. If you want to see the steps behind that brushwork, how we paint walks you through them.

How the likeness gets checked

1. Send photos and a short brief. Say who is in the picture, what to change, the size and the wall it is for.
2. We confirm what we can do and quote. If a photo is too weak to carry a likeness, we tell you before you pay anything.
3. We paint and send progress photos. The face comes early, so this is the moment to tell us the smile is too wide or the eyes too dark.
4. You see photos of the finished canvas. Nothing leaves the studio until you approve them.
5. We pack and hand over. Rolled, stretched, framed or crated. If a piece has a defect that is our fault, we repaint it at our cost.

Named portrait artists often quote 8 to 24 weeks and ask for sittings. Cheap photo sites promise two weeks and leave you wondering whether a person touched it. We sit in the middle: real painters, a real studio address, 7 to 10 business days.

Executive and institutional series

There is no minimum order. Trade pricing starts at one piece, improves at 6 and again at 21, and mixed subjects count together, so founder portraits and corridor landscapes are quoted as one order. For a series we agree the format up front: same size, same background tone, same crop at the shoulders, same frame, so portraits added in five years still match the ones hanging now.

Get the sitter’s written consent before you send us their photographs, and send the best available photo of each person rather than a scan of an old badge. Designers and facilities teams work with us the same way.

Did not find what you like? Send us what you like and we paint it

Some buyers do not want a likeness at all. They want a figure on the wall: a dancer, a face made of thick paint. Our figurative and human collection has 22 designs of that kind, and every one can be repainted in your size, your colors and your finish. The custom figurative paintings page goes deeper, and pet portraits have their own page.

If nothing fits, send us what you like. A photo, a screenshot, a Pinterest board, a sketch, an AI-generated image, a paint chip or a piece of fabric for the color. We paint from any of those.