YOU are an important part of a perfect portrait!
Ever heard of “what-you-see-is-what-you get”? For drawing portraits, the photographs provided are a very important part of the process. A common challenge is blurry photos or bad lighting. This makes it very hard to capture the fine details that bring your portrait to life. Your finished portrait will be “photo-realistic”, so a good photo that is well composed, sharp, with natural lighting makes the drawing more life-like. Since I work from your photographs, the accuracy in the completed portrait depends on the quality and clarity of the photos you can provide. I use an ipad to bring up your photos and need to be able to zoom in to get those tiny hair details and eye colors drawn correctly. This is why submitting photos is so important. Multiple photos are very helpful and always recommended.
1
Lighting
Natural lighting is best, but avoid bright direct sun. Indoor light bulbs cast unnatural light. For best results, photograph inside during the day facing a window or outdoors without harsh shadows. You want to see the eyes with some highlight. The eyes are important for making your portrait look alive and realistic. Take a few extra photos of the face to get as much face and eye detail as possible! Compare the two pictures at the bottom of this page noting the details in the left vs. right photos. *A note about phone cameras*: Since most of these lenses have a wide field of view, they can distort the edges of a picture.
2
Composition
Portraits consist mainly of the head and face, with some chest or shoulder and sometimes the front legs. These are the kinds of photos to submit. Photos that are of the whole dog with lots of background will make zooming in on the head and face details much more difficult. The details, lack of sharpness, inadequate lighting and small file sizes fall apart when trying to get into the fine details of hair, highlights and shadows. So try to get the head to be the focal point of your photo without zooming in.
2
Eye to Eye
Raise your dog up on something if possible, or lower yourself to your dog’s eye level, facing him toward the camera and light source, or at a partial angle. Center your dog in your picture. Remember, phone cameras can distort snouts making them too large, and make proportions unnatural at the edges of your photo. You can spark interest in the eyes and get cute expressions by making funny noises or having a favorite treat or toy with you that your dog is interested in. Have someone help you get his attention so you can catch expressions quickly.
3
File Sizes – super important
Before you email a photo, check your camera settings and the attachment size when you attach the image to email. *Please do not text photos*.
***Apple iphone photos are now taken in HEIC format, which is to save space. Please send .jpg photos for maximum resolution. You can change your camera settings in “settings-camera-formats” and check “most compatible”.
When you attach a photo to an email, a menu will pop up. (See samples at the bottom of this page.) Choose “original”, “actual” or “full” file size. Chose the largest file option. The bigger the better. A file size that is at least 3MB is most effective. Even larger files are needed if your photo has a lot of unnecessary background. If I have to crop in too much, the details will be lost.
The “actual” or “full” sizes you should see on your phone’s menu creates a larger file attachment and may take a couple seconds longer to send. However, the photo is received at a higher resolution, showing finer details. Once the photo is attached to an email message, you should see the file size displayed. The better the photos, the better the portrait’s realism.
4
Submitting Photos
Usually phones reduce pictures in text messages in order to save “bandwidth”, so always send photos by email. If you were to choose the “small” or “medium” size, or even “large”, your phone compresses the image making a smaller file size, removing details that can make a portrait less realistic. A blurry photo gives no detail to work from, and details would be suggestive and not actual. Smart phones vary, as do internet providers, so check your settings.
Sending a sharp picture will result in a portrait that will look just like a photo!
Poor quality
iphone attachment menu
android menu
The face in the first photo is blurry and in shadow. The second photo facing a window is sharp and detailed. The third and fourth images show the attachment menus that pop up when sending photos in email.