17 Apart Portrait by Katie Noonan

While in the city, we received a custom portrait of Tim, myself and Basil all hand drawn by one of my Etsy coworkers, Katie Noonan.

I'd ordered it last month after seeing her pet illustrations in her Etsy shop, GoodAfternoonan. I fell in love with her drawing style and couldn't resist placing an immediate order for a rendition of the 3 of us and let her know we could pick it up in person when we'd be in town.

We were blown away with the final result to say the least:

The level of detail and whimsy in Katie's illustrations is incredible — right down the the time and attention she puts into the backgrounds of her portraits. Everything is hand drawn in archival ink and then sewn onto layered matting to create a border. To give you an idea of the scale, our portrait is roughly 9"x12" and the entire matting makes it right around 16"x20" — so it's pretty substantial. We wanted something on a large scale, but she can make them in any size.

Ordering with Katie was a breeze — I simply sent her a few different options of my favorite photos of Tim, myself and Basil, then she worked her magic to make them all come alive within a single portrait.

Receiving the portrait at work was probably the best part. I couldn't wait to see it and it was the first time Katie had seen one of her subjects view a portrait in person — so many of our coworkers gathered around gasping at how amazing of a job she did. It was definitely the talk of our little corner that day.

We've got plans to have the piece framed and are looking forward to finding a place in our house where it will live, but couldn't wait to share the illustration here on the blog since who knows how long it might take for us to get it done, ha!

Check out Katie's shop when you get a chance — she can do everything from custom pet, kids and family portraits and is open to new ideas you may have as well. While we really wanted one of these for ourselves, we're slipping the idea into our back pockets as gift ideas for the future.

P.S. Katie told us she drew Basil about 4 times before going with this final version and that he might make separate appearances throughout her shop from the other runs. Just this morning I spotted what has to be him hanging out right here, then spotted a couple more versions over on her Facebook page. Tim and I might just snap these shots up too to hang in another area of the house. Too funny.