Learning to say NO

I accept commissions to paint portraits of animals from photos. An animal lover myself, I enjoy painting cats, dogs, horses - you name the animal, I've probably painted it at some point.

My strangest commission was to paint a Dodo to join a collection of Dodo memorabilia. Of course there aren't any actual Dodo's around these days to photograph or indeed, any actual photographs or definitive illustrations so I went back to a childhood haunt, Horniman museum, where there is a 'stuffed' Dodo model. It was strange, and ironic, to work 'from life' rather than from a photo but as it stayed still I could take my time and sketch from all different angles. I had free reign to do what I liked so long as it depicted a Dodo so I decided to make it a happy picture of a family rather than an image of a solitary Dodo heading for extinction.

But I have my limits. I have found, from experience, that I cannot produce a really good painting from poor reference photos. It is disappointing for me, not to mention hard work, to struggle to make out features in a poorly lit photo - the hardest one was a silhouette of a black Labrador - I literally had to use guesswork and I know for a fact it could not possibly be a true likeness of the animal, although the owners were very pleased with it. If the pet is still around I can always suggest the owner takes more photos but I prefer to take my own photos so I can meet the animal. Even if I do end up using the owner's photos as reference, somehow it is easier to draw the animal if we have met.

It is difficult for an owner to judge their own photos because they know or knew the animal and that is what they see when they look at the photos - they don't necessarily notice that there is a huge shadow covering the eyes because they know what the eyes look like. I have been sent photos of a dog as a puppy and as an older dog towards the end of its life with the request to put the older dog in the pose of the puppy, or a recently clipped dog with the request to paint it with longer hair.

I have always accepted the challenge and have never said 'no' until now. And it has made me feel very bad, to say I cannot paint a portrait of someone's beloved animal because the photos aren't good enough and, as it is a posthumous portrait, there is no chance of getting any better photos. Perhaps it is vanity, but when I see some of the bad portraits that are out there and look back at some of my earlier attempts - not thrown away, I keep all of my work hidden away, even the things I myself have rejected - I really don't want to give anyone a 'bad' painting, no matter how much I'd appreciate the fee.

In an attempt to avoid this problem, I produced a set of guidelines on my Pets by Josie website on how to photograph pets. http://www.petsbyjosie.co.uk/how_to_order.html