How to Commission a Portrait Painting: A Step-by-Step Guide

Most people who commission a portrait painting have never commissioned a painting before. They've bought prints, maybe an original or two, possibly a framed thing from a gallery on holiday. But ordering a one-off, made-to-order painting of someone they actually care about — partner, parent, dog, late grandfather, athlete they've never met — is new territory. There's no obvious starting point. There's no Amazon for it. There's no review aggregator. There's just artists, somewhere, doing it.

I'm Richard Day. I'm a portrait artist in Norwich, UK, and over the past decade I've painted commissions for clients across the US, the UK and a long list of places in between — musicians, athletes, late spouses, business founders, and a startling number of cats. I wrote this because most of my new commission clients ask me the same six questions in roughly the same order, and I'd rather you had the answers up front than fish for them apologetically.

If you'd rather read this on the sofa, I packaged the whole thing — prices, questions to ask, red flags, the process — into a free PDF. Same content, no scrolling, yours to keep: sign up here to get the guide sent over.

First — what "commission" actually means

A commission is a painting made specifically for you, to your brief, by a particular artist. You pick the subject. You pick (roughly) the size. The artist paints it from photos you send.

That's different from buying an existing original — something already painted, sitting in a studio or a gallery — and different again from buying a print, which is a copy of something else. A commission is a one-off. Made-to-order, original, yours and no one else's.

The reasons people commission haven't really changed in a few hundred years: mark someone, remember someone, celebrate someone, put a face on the wall that means something to you. Materials have moved on (oil, acrylic, watercolour, digital, mixed media). The impulse hasn't.

The price question (the one nobody wants to ask first)

Everyone asks this eventually. Most people apologetically, after about twenty minutes of polite circling. Here's the actual lay of the land in 2026:

• Student / emerging artist, small (8×10" to 16×20"): £100–£400 / $130–$500
• Established artist, medium (20×24" to 30×40"): £400–£1,500 / $500–$1,900
• Established artist, large (40×30" and up): £1,200–£5,000+ / $1,500–$6,500+
• Top-tier or celebrity artists: £5,000 — and from there, however high the room can stand.

What pushes a price up isn't mysterious: bigger canvas, more figures, hyper-realist detail, oil over acrylic, longer waitlist. That's about it.

The honest test for whether an artist's commission price is fair is to look at what they charge for their non-commissioned originals at the same size. Most artists price commissions 15–25% above the equivalent original to cover the back-and-forth and the bespoke nature of the work. Much more than that and somebody's chancing their arm. Much less and you should ask why.

For what it's worth, my own commissions start at £295 for the smallest and go up to £1,495 for the biggest. All original oil and acrylic on canvas. No exceptions, no upsells.

How to pick an artist without going mad

This is the part most "how to commission a portrait" guides skip, which is strange, because it matters more than the price does.

Look at the artist's own work first, not their commissions. Commissioned paintings are constrained — somebody else's subject, often a step or two back from the artist's own taste. The pieces an artist makes for themselves are where the actual voice lives. If you don't love their voice in those, you won't love it in yours.

Match the style to the subject. If an artist paints loose, gestural, expressive work, don't ask them to make it photorealistic — they'll either say no, or do it badly with a face like a dropped balloon. The reverse is just as true. Pick someone whose default mode is already the thing you want.

Look for repeated reviews, not just lots of reviews. Five stars is fine. What you actually want is the same compliments turning up in different people's mouths — "communicated well", "captured the likeness", "shipped on time". If multiple strangers are saying the same true thing, it's probably true.

Ask them how they work. A real working artist can describe their process in about two minutes: how they take references, what they share with you while painting, what happens if you don't like the final piece. If they fumble that, walk away.

Make sure they're human. I almost can't believe I'm typing this in 2026, but here we are: a real percentage of "oil portraits" for sale online are AI prints with brush-stroke textures slapped on top. Look for time-lapse video, studio photos, hand-on-canvas content. If everything you can see is the polished finished piece and nothing in between, ask why.

Reference photos: send more than you think

Reference photos do most of the heavy lifting in a portrait commission. Better photos in, better painting out. Here's how I think about them:

• Send more than feels reasonable. Five to ten is the sweet spot for a single subject. The artist isn't copying any one of them — they're triangulating between them to work out what this person actually looks like.
• Daylight wins. Indirect natural light beats everything else. Hard overhead sun and phone flash both flatten the face out and make skin tones unreadable.
• Get the eyes sharp. The face is what the painting will be judged on, and the eyes are the face. At least two of your references should have the eyes properly in focus.
• Don't fuss about resolution. Modern phone cameras are more than enough. What matters is that the photo is in focus, not how many megapixels it has.
• Old photos are fine. Some of my favourite commissions have been painted from prints forty years old. Tell me which ones matter to you and I'll work with what you have.
• Don't only send the flattering ones. Candid, off-guard shots tell me more about how someone actually looks than carefully posed ones do. Send both.

What the process actually looks like

Every studio runs slightly differently, but the shape of a commission is fairly standard. From your side of the table, it goes like this:

1. You get in touch. Email, contact form, DM. You describe the subject, roughly the size you have in mind, and any context that matters.
2. The artist comes back with a quote. A fixed price, an estimated timeline, and any questions about the references or composition.
3. Deposit. 50% is standard. It books your slot in the queue. Anything outside the 30–60% range is a yellow flag.
4. Reference review. A good artist will study your photos and come back with questions before brush hits canvas.
5. Painting. Most single-figure portraits take 2–4 weeks from this point. Don't trust 48 hours. Real oil paint needs days to dry between layers — there's no honest shortcut.
6. Approval photos. Before anything ships, you see proper finished photos of the painting. If something's off, this is when you say so.
7. Final payment and shipping. Balance paid, painting goes off — well, into a courier's hands, fully insured, hopefully not upside down.

How long this all takes, realistically

• Small single-figure portrait: 2–3 weeks
• Medium single-figure portrait: 3–4 weeks
• Large or multi-figure portrait: 4–8 weeks
• Top-tier artists with long waitlists: 3–12 months. Sometimes longer.

If someone quotes you a 48-hour turnaround on an "oil painting", they're either using AI, outsourcing to assistants without telling you, or selling print-on-demand canvases. Sometimes all three. Walk away.

Red flags, and what good looks like

Red flags:

• Pricing dramatically lower than the rest of the field. £20 for an "oil painting" is print-on-canvas with an AI portrait under the brushstrokes. Always is.
• Vagueness about process, studio, or working method.
• Testimonials only on their own website, with no external trail.
• Fuzzy answers about timeline or amendments.
• 100% payment upfront with no contract.
• No refund or amendment policy they'll put in writing.

What good looks like:

• Pricing on the website, or at least in the first reply.
• A clear written process — steps, timeline, what's included.
• Reviews on third-party platforms you can actually verify.
• Active social with paint-on-canvas content, not just finished pieces.
• An amendment policy that doesn't penalise you for using it.
• A money-back guarantee, in plain English.

How I do it (in case it helps)

Since you're reading this on my website, it'd be a bit coy to skip over how my own commissions work. Briefly:

• Pricing's on the page. Sizes and prices for every type of commission — single subject, couples, families, memorials, pets, abstract, black and white — are on the commissions page. £295 to £1,495.
• Turnaround is usually 2–3 weeks. If my queue is longer than that, I'll tell you upfront.
• Progress photos throughout. Or no photos, if you'd rather be surprised at the end. Both are fine.
• A time-lapse video comes with every commission. You see the whole thing built up from blank canvas.
• Amendments are unlimited before shipping. No fine print, no per-revision charges.
• Full money-back guarantee. If the final piece doesn't land, you don't pay.
• Free worldwide shipping. Tracked, insured, packaged like an heirloom.
• No AI, no prints, no shortcuts. Every painting is original oil and acrylic on canvas, painted from start to finish by me.

Two ways in: the enquiry form, or the product page

One bit of housekeeping. There are two ways into a commission with me, and they suit different people.

If you already know exactly what you want — single subject, this size, this person — you can buy the commission straight from the product page like any other shop checkout. Pick the size, place the order, I get in touch about references afterwards. The relevant ones are single subject, couples, families, memorials and pets.

If you'd rather talk first — you're not sure about size, you want to send a photo and hear what I think, you've got an awkward composition in mind, or you just want to feel out whether I'm the right person for the painting — there's a separate enquiry form on the commissions page. You fill in a few details, upload a reference photo, and we start a back-and-forth before anything is paid for. No commitment. For anything that isn't completely straightforward, I prefer it this way — it saves both of us time, and it lets me actually look at the photo before I quote.

Where to start, if all of this is new to you

1. Spend a few hours looking at portfolios — originals, not just commissions. Find an artist whose default style you'd happily look at on a wall for the next thirty years.
2. Email two or three of them. Don't just go with the first one. Compare the responses — speed, warmth, transparency, how comfortable they are answering a direct question.
3. Send more reference photos than you think you need. Ten beats five. Daylight beats flash.
4. Trust your gut on voice. If you don't love their default work, you won't love their commission.

And if I'm the artist for the job — single subject, couples, families, memorials, pets, abstract, black and white — the next move is below.

Tell me who you'd like painted, upload a photo, and I'll come back with a quote and a timeline. No deposit, no commitment — just a conversation. Start an enquiry here, or sign up on the homepage first to get the full PDF guide if you'd rather read everything offline.