The Fur Is Where the Love Lives

People think a pet portrait is about getting the face right. It's not. It's the fur.

It's the exact swirl of cowlick on the chest. The one ear that never fully stood up. The white sock on just the back-left foot. The patch of gray that crept in over their last couple of years — the gray you'd have given anything to watch arrive slower.

That's the part I spend the hours on. Each portrait is thousands of tiny hand stitches laid in the direction the coat actually grew, on dark fabric so the color goes deep and warm. It's why people open the package and cry. Not because it looks like a dog. Because it looks like theirs.

The photo makes or breaks it

Your portrait is only ever as good as the photo you hand me — and the right one is almost certainly already in your camera roll.

• Eye level beats looking down. Crouch to their height, or find the shot where someone already did. Standing-up-human-height flattens the face.
• Soft natural light, no flash. A window, an overcast afternoon, the shade on a walk. Flash blows out fur and turns eyes into headlights.
• Sharp and close. I need individual hairs, the wet of the nose, the catchlight in the eye. Blur that's invisible on your phone becomes a lot of blur up close.
• The expression that's them. The goofy tongue-out, the side-eye, the dignified old-man stare. Personality reads in thread far more than a perfect posed sit.
• For memorials, send everything. If you only have a handful of photos, don't filter. Send them all and let me find the angle. I'll treat every one gently.

What you get

A $250 heirloom hoop, framed in warm wood or rose gold, ready to hang. A memorial for the one you lost, or a celebration of the one currently shedding on your couch.