This is the post I found hardest to write, and the one I most wanted to.
A good portion of the portraits I draw are of pets who have already gone. People come to me weeks after, sometimes years after, sometimes on the actual anniversary. They arrive apologetic, as though asking for a drawing of an animal is a strange thing to want. It isn't. It's one of the most understandable things in the world.
So this is a gentle guide, written for anyone standing where I once stood — with a phone full of photos they can't quite bring themselves to open.
You are not being silly
Let's start here, because almost every message I receive about a memorial portrait contains a version of the sentence "I know it's just a dog, but…".
It was not just a dog. It was the thing that was pleased to see you every single day without exception. It was the reason you went outside in February. It was a small warm presence at the exact moment your life was hardest, and it asked for nothing except dinner and the occasional acknowledgement that it was, in fact, a very good animal.
Grief for a pet is real grief. It has the same shape as any other kind — the sudden ambushes, the fine-then-not-fine, the way you can go months without crying and then completely fall apart in the pet food aisle. You do not need to justify wanting something beautiful to remember them by.
There is no right time
People ask me this often: is it too soon? Or, more painfully, is it too late?
It is neither. Some people order a portrait the same week, because they need something to do with all that feeling and commissioning a drawing is at least an action. Others wait three years, until they can look at the photos without their chest going tight.
Both are completely normal. I have drawn pets who died a fortnight ago and pets who died in 1998. The portrait doesn't have an expiry date and neither does your right to want one.
If you're wondering whether you're ready, you're allowed to just ask me and then think about it for a month. Nothing happens until you say so.
About the photograph
This is the part that worries people most, so let me be very clear about it.
The photo does not need to be good.
When a pet has passed away, the photos you have are the photos you have. There will be no new ones. Often the best picture of them is blurry, or badly lit, or taken from an odd angle, or has someone's thumb in the corner, or is a screenshot of a video, or is a photograph of a printed photograph from before phones existed.
Send it anyway. Genuinely. Some of the portraits I'm proudest of started as a pixelated smudge that somebody loved enormously.
What I can usually work with:
- Blurry photos, as long as the shape of the face is readable
- Screenshots from videos — often better than you'd expect, and sometimes the only place their real expression lives
- Old printed photos, photographed or scanned
- Photos where they're small in the frame, if the resolution allows a crop
- Two or three imperfect photos combined — I can take the eyes from one and the pose from another
What genuinely helps: if you have several, send them all and tell me which one feels most like them, even if it's technically the worst picture. I'd rather draw the right expression from a bad photo than the wrong expression from a good one.
And if you're not sure whether what you have is enough — just ask. I'll look, and I'll tell you honestly. I would never take an order I didn't think I could do justice to.
Tell me about them
This is optional, and some people would rather not, and that's completely fine. But if you want to, you can tell me anything.
Their name. How old they were. The noise they made when you came home. The thing they were frightened of that made no sense. Whether they were dignified or a complete disaster. Whether they slept on the bed, and which side. What they did that you'd give anything to see one more time.
I read every word of it. It changes how I draw them — not in any way I could put into a technical description, but it does. It's the difference between drawing an animal and drawing your animal.
People sometimes worry about writing too much, or about getting emotional in a message to a stranger on the internet. Please don't. I have cried at my desk over other people's dogs more times than I can count, and I consider it one of the better parts of the job.
What I try to make
Something bright.
This is a deliberate choice and it's worth explaining. When my own girl died, I had photographs, and the photographs made me sad, because a photograph is a record of a moment that is definitively over. What helped was drawing her — because a drawing isn't a record. It's an interpretation. It's how she seemed to me, rather than how she appeared to a lens.
So memorial portraits from me are not muted, or sepia, or sad. They're the same bold pink and green as everything else I make. They're a little bit cheeky. They usually have the expression the pet wore when they'd got away with something.
The point is not to make you cry. The point is that one day, a few months from now, you'll walk past it on the way to the kitchen and smile without meaning to, and for a second they'll just be around again, the way they used to be.
Portraits for someone else
If you're ordering for a friend or family member who's lost a pet, a few things I've learned:
- It's almost always welcome, even when you're worried it might be too much. Being reminded that other people also loved their animal is not painful; being the only one who seems to remember is.
- Get the photo right. Ask someone close to them which picture is the picture. Pulling one from social media is fine, but check the resolution with me first.
- Consider the timing. The days everyone forgets are the hardest ones — a month later, the anniversary, the birthday. A portrait arriving then can mean an enormous amount.
- Tell me it's a gift and I'll keep it quiet, send previews to you rather than them, and make sure nothing spoils the surprise.
And if you're still deciding
That's fine too. This post will still be here. So will I.
You can message me with nothing but a photo and the word maybe, and I'll tell you honestly what I could do with it, and then you can go away and think about it for as long as you need. There's no deadline and there's no pressure, and I will never chase you.
When you're ready — if you're ever ready — I'd be genuinely honoured to draw them. 🤍
— Lala x