Nursery Art and Children’s Drawings Painted at Gallery Size

We hand-paint children’s drawings onto canvas at wall size, and we paint made-to-order art for nurseries and kids’ rooms. Every piece is painted by hand, to order, by our painters in Dafen Art Village, Shenzhen. We paint in acrylic unless you ask for oil. There is no minimum order, so one canvas is a normal order here. We photograph the finished painting and send you the photos, and nothing ships until you approve it.

Why parents send us a drawing

The messages we get usually start the same way. A child made one drawing the family cannot throw out. It has been on the fridge for a year, the corners are curling, and there is a box in the closet with the rest. Most families cannot keep all of it. Painting one drawing at wall size keeps the one that matters, at a size that says it matters.

The purchase is almost always tied to a date. A first birthday. A nursery going up in the third trimester. A move, when the kids’ room finally becomes a real room. Mother’s Day, when a grandparent wants something no shop sells. That is why the calendar gets its own section below. Years later the same calendar shows up again, when families order graduation and milestone portraits against a date.

What we paint for nurseries and kids’ rooms

We also paint from a family photo, a digital file, a render or a Pinterest board. Our custom art page lists everything we can work from. If you would rather start from a design we already have and change it, the collections parents pick from most are our colorful paintings, our animal and wildlife paintings and our floral and botanical paintings. Any of them can be repainted at your size and in your colors.

We keep the wobbly lines

This is the part people worry about, and they are right to. A child’s drawing is good because of the parts an adult would fix. The sun in the corner. The arms coming out of the head. The color that went outside the line.

A faithful copy is the default. The drawing gets scaled up and painted just as it is, wobble included. Nothing is straightened, centered or shaded unless you ask. If a detail will not read well at wall size, we say so first and let you decide. Prefer the drawing interpreted rather than copied? Say that too, and we can paint the same shapes in thick palette-knife texture or on a colored ground. One painter takes one canvas from start to finish, and you can read how we paint before you send us anything.

Tell us what to do with the paper itself. Creases, tape marks, a torn corner and the ruled lines of a school notebook can be painted in or left out, and parents split about evenly on this. If the piece has to sit next to a specific wall paint or fabric, ask about color matching when you write to us. We mix the color, photograph it in daylight and get your approval before we start painting.

Choosing a size for a crib wall, a dresser or a playroom

Nursery walls are small, and people still order art that is too small for them. The mistake is easy to make. A drawing that fills a sheet of paper looks big in your hands and vanishes on a wall.

The fix is to measure rather than guess. Do this before you ask for a quote:

• Measure the clear wall, edge to edge, and send us that number. Measure the space the art can actually use, not the whole wall, if a wardrobe or a door swing eats into it.
• Measure the furniture the art will hang above, such as the dresser or the changing table. A painting narrower than the furniture under it looks lost.
• Cut newspaper or cardboard to the size you are considering and tape it on the wall for a day. It costs nothing and it settles the argument.
• Tell us about anything in the way. A window frame, a shelf, a sloped attic ceiling or a light switch changes what fits.
• Think about the room in a few years. A nursery becomes a kid’s room, and a painting sized for the crib wall often ends up over a desk.

Then we handle the rest. Our 60 standard sizes run from 24 by 20 inches up to 80 by 60 inches, plus sets of two and three panels. If none of them suits your wall, we paint to your measurements at the same rate, so an odd size costs no more than a standard one. A playroom usually has one long blank wall, and that is where our larger canvases earn their place. A drawing painted that big stops looking like decoration and starts looking like a mural. Send the wall measurement with your enquiry and we will tell you what we think fits, including when we think you are going too small. If you want to know what else goes into the number, how we quote explains it.

About hanging a painting over the crib

We would rather say this plainly than sell you the wrong thing. A hand-painted canvas on solid wood bars is heavier than a paper print, and a framed one is heavier again. We suggest not hanging anything above the crib at all, and checking your crib maker’s guidance.

Heavy texture deserves a second thought too. Thick impasto adds real weight, and it is a hard, raised surface a child will eventually touch, so while a child is small enough to reach it, we steer parents toward a flatter finish. If the hanging worries you, ordering the canvas rolled in a tube is worth considering, because a local framer can stretch it and fit the hardware your wall actually needs.

How it works, and how you stay in control

You are sending a photo of something irreplaceable to a studio abroad that you have never visited. Here is what happens, and where you get to stop.

1. Send the photo Shoot the drawing flat in daylight, no flash, phone straight above, whole sheet in the frame, no filter. Send the largest file your phone will send through the quote form. We never need the paper original.
2. We reply with a quote WhatsApp replies are usually immediate; email replies usually arrive within 12 hours, and confirms the size, medium, finish and what we will and will not change.
3. You pay a deposit Usually 50 percent, with the balance before the goods are released, by wire transfer, PayPal or card.
4. We paint it On commissions we send progress photos, so you see the drawing taking shape.
5. You approve it We photograph every finished canvas and send you the photos. Nothing leaves the studio until you say yes. If a piece has a defect that is our fault, we repaint it at our cost.
6. It ships Rolled in a tube, stretched on solid wood bars, or framed in black, white, wood, silver or gold. All five frame colors cost the same.

Getting it there before the birthday

Work backward from the date using the real numbers. Production is 7 to 10 business days for 1 to 5 pieces. Express by FedEx or DHL takes another 5 to 10 business days after that. On top of those two, allow a few days at the start for the quote and the deposit, and a few days at the end for you to look at the approval photos and say yes. Add it all up against your own calendar, and give yourself slack rather than booking the minimum. Oil and heavy texture take longer, and pieces 36 by 48 inches and larger sit at the top of their production band, because thick paint has to dry between layers. If the date is too close, we will tell you rather than take the order and disappoint you.

One tip for grandparents. If several households want the same drawing, order them together. Our rate improves at 6 pieces and again at 21, mixed designs count together, and one shipment costs less than three. Rolled canvas in a tube is the cheapest way to ship a group order, especially over about 20 pieces, and a local framer can stretch each one.

Tattoos, lyrics and other personal designs

Your tattoo, painted on canvas. We will paint it if the design is yours. The artist who drew the tattoo usually holds the rights to the design, so we ask for their written permission unless you drew it yourself. Song lyrics belong to the songwriter and the publisher, so we do not paint copyrighted lyrics as text. We can paint the scene the song describes, or your own handwriting of a phrase you wrote.

The same rule covers a common nursery request. Children draw the cartoon characters they love, and those characters belong to a film studio. Copyright matters to us, so we paint only work that has passed into the public domain and we do not copy other companies’ designs, so we cannot paint a licensed character, even a child’s own version of one. If the character is a small part of a bigger drawing, we can leave it out or swap it, and we show you the plan first.

Good fit and not a fit