Portrait Painting Blog

The most frequent question we are asked at Portrait Painting is… “Are your portraits really hand painted?” The answer is “yes”.

We are asked this so often because other websites offer a “photo to canvas” service. These companies use a digital printer and art canvas to print your photo onto a canvas. Just because something is on canvas doesn’t mean it’s hand painted.

Here are a couple tips to distinguish companies that offer paintings versus prints.

PRICE
A hand painted portrait is going to be more expensive than a printed photo. With a “photo to canvas” service, a photo is just printed by the company using a special printer. That’s it. A 24″ x 30″ photo print may cost about $75 while an actual painting of that size will cost around $229 and up.

TURNAROUND TIME
A portrait painting should take a couple weeks, but a printed canvas can be turned around in a couple hours.

LANGUAGE
There are also terms companies use to give the impression that a canvas is painted when it is actually printed. Those terms…

“digital brushstrokes”
“digital paintbrush”
“giclee” – anytime you see this term, it means the photo is printed not painted

If you are looking to have your photo turned into an actual painting, then you should be suspicious of any company that says we can make your photo “look like a painting”. At Portrait Painting, your photo will look like a painting because it is a painting.