Reference Photo Guide

One of the most difficult parts of getting a portrait of your beloved pet is finding the perfect photo to use as a reference. While your photo doesn’t have to be perfect to create a wonderful portrait, it certainly helps! On this page I’ll give you some tips for selecting the perfect photo for me to draw from.

Close and Crisp

Close shots with lots of detail make the best shots for portraits. Those from far away or that are blurred are much harder to work from, and the end portrait will be less detailed.

This out-of-focus picture is not a good reference photo to work from

This is a much crisper picture, which allows for more details in the portrait

Lighting

Bright lighting that allows for all your pets beautiful colour and details to shine through is very important, especially for black pets. While I can adjust lighting of a reference to a certain extent, poor lighting can lose a lot of the detail in an animal’s fur.

Much of the detail and colour is lost in Kiraly’s black fur, because the lighting in this photo is not great.

This is a much better image, with bright lighting that shows off the blues, purples and reds in Kiraly’s fur.

Framing

Framing the animal in the photo is important to make an artistically pleasing portrait. This is one of the areas where I have the most control, as I almost always crop a reference photo to get the most pleasing portrait of your pet. However, if the original reference photo has ears or noses outside the frame, that makes things more challenging!

This picture cuts off some of the areas of Gabbie’s face, making it a poor reference photo

This image give me a lot more flexibility; I would likely crop in closer to focus on Gabbie’s face.

Eyes

The eyes are the most important part of your pet’s portrait, so being able to see them is a must! A portrait of a sleeping animal can be wonderful, but for the most part you want to find a reference photo that showcases your pet’s beautiful peepers.

In this picture Tiiah’s head is turned to the side so we can barely tell what colour her eye is.

This picture shows off Tiiah’s gorgeous green eyes perfectly