Watercolor vs. Oil vs. Line Art: How to Choose a Portrait Style for Your Dog

Choosing a portrait style is a bit like choosing a haircut: it's about the dog, and it's about you. The same Labrador can look like an oil painting, a loose watercolor or a clean modern illustration. Here's how the main families of style differ, and how to pick the one that fits.

A modern illustrated portrait leaves the paint and paper out. The dog is drawn head and chest, in smooth tones true to the coat, on one flat field of color. There is no line work and no dramatic light, so the likeness does all the talking. It reads like a contemporary art print.

Modern sets your dog on soft white. Modern Sage is the same portrait on a quiet sage ground, for a little color on a pale wall.

• –Choose modern if your home is light, simple or newly furnished.
• –You'd like the portrait to sit easily beside prints and photographs.
• –You're not sure of the recipient's taste. It's the easiest of our styles to place.

Oil paint dries slowly and can be built up in layers, which lets painters blend soft transitions and add thick, textured highlights. The look is rich and deep: warm shadows, glowing light and visible brushstrokes.

Oil is our oil style: your dog built from thick palette-knife strokes against one flat, muted color.

• –Choose oil if you want the most color and texture.
• –Your dog has a rich coat: black, chocolate, red or brindle. Labradors, Rottweilers and Golden Retrievers glow in it.
• –Your home leans classic, warm or traditional.

Real watercolor is transparent pigment carried in water and painted onto textured paper. Colors bloom and bleed into each other, and the white of the paper becomes part of the image. The result is light, airy and loose, with crisp detail only where it matters, usually the eyes and nose.

Watercolor is our lightest style. Pastel sits between watercolor and oil: velvety layered strokes on warm toned paper, soft in the coat and exact in the eyes.

• –Choose watercolor if you want something gentle and light.
• –Your dog has a pale or patterned coat: cream, white, apricot or merle. Australian Shepherds and Goldendoodles look lovely in it.
• –Your room is bright, Scandinavian or coastal.
• –It's a memorial and you want warmth more than drama.

Fine line art is drawing pared back to its essentials: confident black ink lines on warm paper, little or no shading and plenty of empty space. It's restrained and graphic, the kind of piece that suits a modern gallery wall.

Line Drawing is our minimalist style. Charcoal is its moodier, more expressive cousin, with soft smudges, rich blacks and a lot of feeling in the eyes.

• –Choose line art if your home is modern or minimalist.
• –Your dog has a distinctive outline: big ears, a beard, a sculpted clip. Miniature Schnauzers, Border Collies and Poodles are naturals.
• –You'd like a portrait that's subtle rather than loud.
• –You're building a gallery wall with other black-and-white pieces.

Your dog's coat has a lot to say about which style will flatter them. A few rules of thumb:

• –Black and very dark coats do well in Oil and Charcoal, which are built on deep shadows and warm highlights.
• –White, cream and pale coats look luminous in watercolor and fine line, where the paper does half the work. In oil, a pale dog glows dramatically against a dark background.
• –Merle, brindle and patchwork coats keep their texture in painterly styles. Graphic styles simplify patterns, so choose those when you want boldness over detail.
• –Wiry, curly and fluffy coats look wonderful in line and charcoal, which emphasize texture. Watercolor softens it into something dreamier.

For a gift, think about the wall it will hang on. If you're unsure of their taste, Modern or Watercolor suits almost any home, Oil suits a traditional one, and Line Drawing a modern one. For a memorial, most people lean toward the gentler styles (Watercolor, Charcoal, Pastel), but the only real rule is that it should feel like the dog.

1. 1.Where will it hang? Start with the room. Warm, traditional rooms suit oil; bright, modern rooms suit a modern illustration, watercolor and line.
2. 2.What's the mood? Tender (Watercolor, Pastel), timeless (Oil, Charcoal) or modern (Modern, Line Drawing)?
3. 3.Who is it for? For a gift, think about the recipient's home and taste, not your own.

You don't have to guess. Upload a photo and you can try every style, as many times as you like. The style that looks most like your dog isn't always the one you'd expect. Not sure which suits your breed? Each of our breed pages suggests a few.