Sarah Paints Pets
I am so glad that I came across Sarah Miller through the Be There in Five podcast group on Facebook. Sarah is an Atlanta-based pet portrait artist. Looking at her paintings, you’d think she’d been doing this for her whole life. I was surprised to learn that Sarah is a relative newcomer to the world of pet portraiture!
Photos from Sarah’s About Page, which details her first pet painting and her late pup, Toby, who lives on in her gorgeous logo.
A Birthday Gift Pet Portrait
For my birthday, Brett ordered me an 8×10 inch three-pet portrait gift certificate. It takes time for Sarah to do her painting, obviously, so the gift certificate worked out great because it gave me time to pick out the pictures of our cats to send in to her.
It took me quite some time to go through my cat pictures to figure out which to send in. This is partially because I have so many pictures of the cats on my phone, but also because I was focusing on finding a certain style of picture: mainly, clear shots of the cats sitting, looking directly at the camera. I simply do not have a photo like this of all three cats, so I called upon Sarah’s creativity to mix a few pictures featuring these poses into one.
It took time, but I ultimately narrowed it down to about 50, then to 30, and then down to 9.
Part of my iPhone folder of pictures to possibly send to Sarah Paints Pets
Ultimately, these were the clearest photos I wound up sending in:
The Painting Process
Sarah got back to me really quickly and gave me a time frame of when to expect the portrait. I was so impressed with the initial version of the portrait, even when it wasn’t quite done.
What struck me the most at first – besides the accuracy of Louis and Olivia’s polydactyl paws! – was the postures of the cats. She perfectly (purrfectly?) captured their poses and body language. Olivia’s curious gaze and little ballet feet were particularly lovely, I thought, and accurate to her in real life. Sarah even captured Louis’ chin spot and Emory’s little lighter-gray eyebrows!
Sarah was so open to my suggestions about colors for the cats, and so patient when I nit picked about Olivia’s coloring. She even read my mind and darkened in Olivia’s necklace and arm stripes before I checked in on that!
Side note: I never realized how brown Olivia can look in pictures! Her belly really is quite tan. I guess I don’t notice it as much because I normally see her from above when she tries to trip me while I’m walking through the apartment.
The Finished Product
I was so excited to get the finalized portrait in the mail. It arrived super quickly and was really well protected in its packaging. I was so impressed with the quality of the work already, but when you see it up close, it’s easier to notice all the small details that went into the work. Olivia’s stripes, for example, are such fine etchings that they really look like fur!
We picked up a nice frame for the portrait from Target and decided to hang it over my office desk. It’s the first portrait of all three of the fur babies together, so it’s extra special.
If you’re interested in ordering a portrait for yourself, check out Sarah Paints Pets’ website here.
There are a lot of great examples of her work on Instagram!
Brett and I are so excited to have some new Sarah Paints Pets portraits of our furbabies commissioned for our wedding!
Learn about how we’re using Sarah’s artwork in our wedding decor to honor our furbabies here.
*This post was originally published in 2020. It was most recently updated on February 20, 2024.
