Choosing a style: a field guide to painting your dog

Every style in the library is a written painting brief — a set of decisions about light, surface, costume, and mood — and your photograph is what the brief is painted from. The names come from real traditions, so here is what a few of them mean in practice.

The classical registers

Da Vinci Renaissance and Dutch Master are about paint itself: soft sfumato edges in the first, deep chiaroscuro shadow in the second. They suit dogs with gravity — the older face, the thoughtful eye. Victorian Royalty and Rigaud — Bourbon State Portrait add the full apparatus of a court picture: ermine, brocade, a sky behind the shoulder. These are wonderful on serious dogs and even better on unserious ones.

The painters

Monet dissolves your dog into garden light. Van Gogh Starry Night wraps the face in that unmistakable moving sky. Klimt Gold sets it in ornament and gold leaf. If your dog is all texture — a long coat, an expressive ruff — these styles reward it.

The modern room

Pop Screenprint Grid repeats the face in flat, saturated color, and it is the right call for a graphic dog: strong markings, bold outline. Archive Monochrome strips everything back to a single quiet tone. Charcoal Drawing and Watercolor Realism stay closest to the photograph while still being unmistakably a made thing.

How to actually decide

Don't. That is the honest advice — the renderings are free and each style returns three versions, so try the ones that made you curious and let the results argue. A Greyhound turns out to be astonishing in the classical styles; a Border Collie can carry the modern ones with that famous stare. The style you end up loving is frequently not the one you predicted, and finding that out costs nothing but curiosity.

Try your first three renderings.