Your Own Dog, at the Pub Pool Table: Personalised Portraits Are Coming

Your Own Dog, at the Pub Pool Table: Personalised Portraits Are Coming

The ready-made collection has a wire-haired terrier standing at a pub pool table, cue in hand, pint on the rail. It is the piece people write to us about, and the message is almost always the same sentence: can you do that with mine.

Shortly, yes.

What It Actually Is

You choose one of the painted scenes from the collection. You send a photograph of your animal. The painting is then made with your pet in it — the same composition, the same light, the same absurd dignity, with your dog or cat in the subject's place.

The important word is made. This is not your photograph cut out and dropped onto a background, which is what most "custom pet art" turns out to be when it arrives. The scene is painted around your animal, so the light on their coat matches the light in the room, the brushwork is continuous, and the edges are not a cut-out. If your dog has one ear that sits differently, that ear is in the painting.

Why We Have Not Launched It Yet

Because the failure mode is specific and unforgiving: it has to be your dog.

A portrait that is nearly your dog is worse than no portrait. Owners see their own animal with a precision that does not apply to any other subject — the exact set of the eyes, the particular white patch, the wrong-shaped face that is the entire reason they love it. A piece that gets the breed right and the animal wrong is not a keepsake, it is an insult, and no amount of nice brushwork rescues it.

So the work has gone into likeness rather than into scenery. We are not shipping it until the terrier that comes back is unmistakably the terrier that went in.

What You Will Need

One photograph, and better than you think.

The single biggest factor in the result is the photo, and the rules are unglamorous. Daylight, ideally from a window rather than direct sun. The animal facing roughly towards the camera. Their face taking up a decent part of the frame rather than a distant shape in a field. Sharp — a slightly blurry photo is the one thing that cannot be fixed later.

Phone photos are completely fine. The camera in your pocket is better than anything we would have asked for ten years ago. What is not fine is a dark, distant, motion-blurred shot of a black dog on a black sofa, which is unfortunately the photo most people love most.

The Same Four Formats

Whatever we paint, you can hang it the same four ways as the ready-made collection: rolled on gallery paper, framed with a deep mount in oak, black or white, stretched on canvas over pine, or face-mounted behind polished acrylic.

Personalised pieces take longer than ready-made ones, for the obvious reason that the painting does not exist until you order it. Allow around twelve working days before dispatch rather than five.

Before It Opens

The curated collection is the place to look now. Every scene in it is one you will be able to choose from, so browsing the ready-made range is genuinely useful reconnaissance — find the one that makes you laugh, and that is the one to have your animal painted into.

The Practical Bits

Personalised pieces are made to order and cannot be returned or refunded unless they arrive damaged or defective — send us a photograph of the problem and we will replace the piece or refund you in full. Standard UK delivery is 3-5 business days from dispatch, free over £75 and £4.95 under, with international at 7-14 business days and rates shown at checkout.

Because a personalised piece is painted from your photograph, you will see it before it is printed. Nothing goes on paper until you have looked at it and said yes.