Kitter's portrait

Not long ago we commissioned a posthumous portrait of Max, Alex's cat of nineteen years. Impressed as we were, we have had a portrait painted of Kitter. It turned out beautifully!

The process started with a digital image e-mailed to the artist, Darlene Pucillo (whose website can be reached here.) This is the photo we sent her:



The artist then created a preliminary composition in Photoshop based on our original:



We weren't entirely pleased with this initial version. The background was too dark, the table seemed awkward, and the orange arc behind Kitter didn't really work for us. So we communicated that to the artist, who was extremely receptive. We also sent her another image of Kitter lounging in a basket, which we thought might be incorporated into the design. Here's the additional photo we sent:



Darlene returned to Photoshop, producing this mock-up, which we immediately approved:



The final step, then, was to commit the portrait to paint, which resulted in a very lovely, if slightly fluffier, image of our dear Kitter:



She'll hang next to Max, of course.

By the way, Darlene Pucillo does people portraits, too. I'm considering having a portrait made of my mother, as a gift to her. An 8 x 10" portrait would cost about $110. Not bad at all.