Adopting a pet is embarking on a fantastic adventure, full of love and tenderness. For many of you, this new life companion quickly earns their place as a full-fledged family member.
Whether it's a cat, dog, rodent, or even a bird... You discover the personality of a unique living being who clearly has their own character. A personality that you often try to capture, with varying success, through photography.
A difficult exercise that often proves less effective than drawn portraits for faithfully translating the animal's character. So, many of you are now turning to drawing to immortalize the features of your little life companion.
WPAP, cartoon, realism, or manga... There are different styles available for an animal portrait painting. Find them here in detail, and choose the one that best matches your expectations and your pet's personality!
The Cartoonely Style WPAP Animal Portrait Painting
Created by Indonesian artist Wedha Abdul Rasyid, Wedha's Pop Art Portraits (WPAP) became widely popular in the early 1990s.
The style then experienced a rapid digital boom in the early 2000s. Since then, the popularity of this unique and striking technique has never waned.
WPAP is a drawing technique that draws directly from cubism. In its animal portrait painting version, a WPAP pet portrait aims to represent your four-legged companion's face using colorful geometric facets.
Worked from photos, the technique brings depth to the animal portrait thanks to its invisible lines and mosaics of strong colors.
Often, our pets show us all colors, and WPAP is a beautiful way to pay tribute to their mischievousness.
Especially since this pictorial style is still trendy and blends perfectly with all types of decoration, whether you live in a contemporary house or a traditional-style old home.
The WPAP portrait can thus be considered for any animal, a dog or cat of course, but also for a rabbit, horse, ferret, snake, birds, a unicorn or phoenix (yes! And why not?!)
The advantages of WPAP style animal portrait painting:
- a perfect gift idea for Pop Art lovers who adore their pet;
- great modernity of the WPAP style;
- an artwork with artistic and colorful rendering;
- perfect adaptability to all types of decoration.
The cartoon style animal portrait painting
Temporary madness of the cat running at full speed through the house rooms, clumsiness of the young dog getting tangled up while running in the garden, almost hysterical goat jumps of the dwarf rabbit, budgie chase through their cage...
Often, our pets can make us laugh out loud as they can be funny, curious, and mischievous. Character traits that the cartoon style animal portrait painting perfectly captures!
So, rather than limiting yourself to realism alone, know that it's entirely possible to create a cartoon pet portrait in the style of:
- a comic strip, like Tintin and Snowy, Boule and Bill, the Marsupilami...;
- a cartoon, like The Simpsons, Disney films, Family Guy...;
- an American comic, like Spider-Man, Superman...;
- etc.
The artist you entrust with creating the portrait works from your pet's photo (or pets), regardless of their breed.
You can choose the artwork's background and any small details to include to best translate your little companion's character.
The illustrator then focuses on producing the work while respecting the three golden rules of cartoon drawing:
- simplification of details;
- rounding of shapes;
- and exaggeration of expressions.
Thus capable of easily expressing the animal's emotions and expressions, cartoon proves to be the best drawing style for fully capturing our pets' whimsical personalities.
The advantages of cartoon style animal portrait painting:
- a perfect gift idea for animal lovers and children;
- great personalization of the artwork;
- a technique faithful to the represented subject's personality;
- a style that's both modern and regressive;
- an artwork with tender and funny rendering.
The manga style animal portrait painting
Created in Japan in the early 19th century, manga quickly managed to conquer a vast audience. Its style thus became as popular as it is essential, easily rivaling all other forms of comics, but also cartoons.
Some mangas thus enjoy worldwide popularity, like One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan (SNK), Hunter X Hunter, Death Note, Bleach, Pokémon... And many others that we couldn't all cite here.
So it's quite naturally that animal portraiture has also adapted to manga, respecting the latter's stylistic codes, namely:
- very large eyes;
- a small snout;
- fur with geometric and often disheveled hairs;
- and very marked expressions.
We'll also note the great geometric rigor expected from a manga background, which must absolutely respect perspective.
All these stylistic principles and key markers that allow making your pet the hero of their own manga.
A portrait, again created from photos, that allows faithfully translating the animal's character and personality, just like the cartoon mentioned earlier.
The advantages of manga style animal portrait painting:
- a perfect gift idea for manga and animal fans of all ages;
- great possible personalization of the artwork;
- a technique faithful to the animal's character;
- a trendy and very regressive style;
- an artwork with simultaneously tender and funny rendering.
The realistic style animal portrait painting
The artist in charge of creating your artwork works, again, from one or several photographs of your pet. But this time, the illustrator focuses on producing a perfectly realistic portrait.
Thus, the realistic style animal portrait painting — such as a custom pet oil painting — remains a safe bet, as it's universally appreciated by everyone.
However, several stylistic options are available to you. Indeed, the realistic portrait allows, again, faithfully translating the represented animal's character, and can therefore be personalized at will.
You can thus specify to your illustrator the details you want to integrate into the artwork (a toy your pet loves, their kennel, their favorite cousin, etc.)
Note also that, despite its realism, the animal portrait allows many whims, such as:
- integrating a halo or wings to the painting when the subject is a deceased animal;
- or adding amusing clothes and accessories (uniform, dress, hat, etc.)
The realistic animal portrait can also be treated to give the artwork a particular atmosphere, for example:
- using soft and tender colors for a romantic rendering;
- employing dynamic and flashy colors in the background for a more contemporary rendering;
- black and white treatment to give the whole an elegant and timeless aspect, or even nostalgic depending on the client's expectations.
The advantages of realistic style animal portrait painting:
- a perfect gift idea for all animal lovers;
- a timeless and never-outdated style appreciated by everyone;
- advanced personalization of the artwork;
- a technique faithful to the represented animal's personality.
Conclusion
Ordering an animal portrait painting is a perfect gift idea to reserve for animal lovers. An artwork full of tenderness that, provided it was designed by a talented illustrator, never fails to touch its recipient's heart.
Present your project on Cartoonely now to quickly receive your animal portrait. Detail your needs:
- the desired graphic style (cartoon, realistic, WPAP or manga);
- the number of animals to represent;
- the expected canvas dimensions;
- the background's appearance;
- possible staging options;
- possible accessories to add;
- and any other detail important to you...
Based on your various recommendations, the artist in charge of your project will be able to create an animal portrait painting as unique as your little life companion.
By going through the Cartoonely platform, you're guaranteed quality work, led by an artist specifically chosen for their talent.