Sorry, Lucy, but no thank you

Here's a small ad I saw yesterday:

"Let me draw your pet from a photograph in my own exciting style" says Lucy.

I don't usually like drawings or paintings of animals, and I'm trying to pin down exactly why not. I can see the skill involved in the best animal artists, such as David Shepherd, though I prefer the bird paintings of, say, Charles Tunnicliffe, because he frequently captures the landscape as well as the birds - and I love evocative landscape paintings. The same is true of Peter Scott.

I don't particularly want a painting of a tiger on my wall, as in David Shepherd's paintings, though, because, to me, a photograph can capture the power and beauty of a tiger just as well as a painting. Whereas a good portrait of a human being will capture some of the characteristics of that particular person as perceived by the artist - - and that, to me, adds another level of interest.

Many people, however, seem to want portraits of their pets - if you search the internet for "pet portraits" you will find hundreds of people offering to paint your pet.

But because it's almost always done from a photograph, the artist doesn't know any of the characteristics of that animal - and anyway, most pets don't really have facial expressions in the same way that people do. To you, the cat is a member of your family. (Oh yes, and to me too). Paint it from a photograph, however, and it just looks like - well - a cat.

So the artist frequently cannot resist adding a bit of expression to try to make the animal more individual - a mischievous sideways look, a slight curve of the mouth so it looks as though it's smiling.

And there we are - Disneyfication of a kind I really don't like.

So I suppose that's it - if you're not going to do that Disney thing, you paint the animal just as it appears, just like a photograph: some artists are highly skilled at doing this. But to me, that's what cameras are for.