The festive season has officially begun here, I even started decorating the house this past weekend! Yesterday morning we woke up to our first frost and we just attended our first Christmas market of the year.
Most years I open up commissions for the Christmas period but this year I wanted to do something slightly different. Instead of only taking 1 or 2 big commissions, I decided to create a series of mini-portraits that were complete gifts - mounted, framed and wrapped, ready to gift to save you the hassle in this busy time of year and I have worked really hard to make these as affordable for you as possible.
I wanted to make these just for you so I started out by asking you for your photos of someone you would like to get a portrait of and I drew as many of them as I could over the past couple of weeks. Every portrait that you see here is one of your photos (except the one of my baby doggy of course) ! All, your favourite people and pets.
Every portrait has and will be digitally drawn in pencil. That means that I can easily work in the dark as those daylight hours get fewer and fewer as the days go by, and especially at the moment with my boiler broken, it means I'm not confined to my draughty desk all night long!
I print every portrait myself from my own printer on matt white paper and hand in each one in pencil. They are printed at roughly 5.8 x 8.3 inches then mounted and framed to finish at an approximate size of 9.4 x 14.8 inches. No artwork is complete without a frame, so I asked you on my stories a couple of weeks ago which colour frames you liked the best and most of you said black so I ordered lots of black frames and some mounts to put the finishing touches on each piece.
WANT MORE THAN ONE?
Add the number of copies you would like to your basket, leave me a note letting me know how many are copies and I will refund you the difference as copies are cheaper!
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PHOTOS
The drawings are detailed so ideally, I need well-lit photos that have been taken up close of whomever your subject is. I have lots of experience drawing from slightly blurry or dark photos so I can do that too if I need to. Below are the reference photos I used for these portraits to give you an idea.
Send me as many photos to choose from as you can and when the drawing is done, I will send you a photograph for you to approve before I send it to you.
GIFT-WRAPPING AND PACKAGING
I've always been a little horrified at the waste that goes along with Christmas day, how all of those pretty ribbons and bows, sparkly wrapping papers and shiny foils all have to go in the bin so I wanted to find a way of you being able to have your portraits wrapped guilt and hassle-free.
To make everything as easy for you as possible I have also taken on the task of gift-wrapping for you! I have found the most economically and environmentally friendly way of doing this as I could, everything is recyclable and/or biodegradable all the way down to the tape. The paper is a lovely thick brown craft paper and the candy cane-coloured ribbon is actually made from paper! The tape I am using is brown recyclable tape so the whole lot can go straight into the recycling bin.
The same goes for the packaging, cardboard boxes, shredded paper stuffing and cardboard squares, all can be easily recycled!
DELIVERY
Standard delivery is Royal Mail's "Tracked 48" which includes compensation up to £100 and delivery that aims to be with you within 2 - 3 working days. For peace of mind and speed, I highly recommend upgrading to "Express" delivery which is "Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1 pm" as there are postal strikes at the moment, this option will get your portrait to you the fastest at this very busy time! "Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1 pm" includes compensation up to £500 and delivery before 1pm the next working day
The portraits will only be available in the run-up to Christmas so spaces are very limited. As I write this, there are only 23 working days left before the last date for sending out Christmas posts and I will be closing the shop a little before that to make sure that everything has the best chance of getting to you on time.
If you were one of those to submit a photo for me to draw and I did, your portrait can now be purchased from my shop! Just leave me a message telling me which one is yours.
Is it too early to say merry Christmas? Nah
Merry Christmas!
Message me anywhere if you have any questions,
Camile xx