The first time I really looked at a dog—I mean really looked—I was six years old, sitting on the cool tile floor of my grandmother's apartment in Happy Valley, Hong Kong.

She had this old Shih Tzu named Xixi who'd seen better days. Cloudy eyes, wobbly back legs, fur matted in places my grandmother couldn't reach anymore. Most people would've walked past him without a second glance. But I'd sit there for hours, watching the way light fell across his face in the late afternoon, how one ear would twitch when the neighbour's maid hung laundry outside the window.

My grandmother used to say: "Mì mi, you're not just looking. You're seeing."

I didn't understand what she meant then. Thirty years later, sitting in my Shanghai studio with a paintbrush in hand and a client's beloved Labrador staring back at me from a reference photo, I finally get it.

Two Worlds, One Way of Seeing

Moving to London for art school was a shock. Not the weather—everyone warns you about the weather. What shocked me was how differently people looked at things.

In Hong Kong, we see in layers. A crowded street isn't chaos—it's composition. The way a vegetable seller arranges bok choy, the precise angle of a bamboo scaffolding pole, the exact moment when afternoon light cuts through the high-rises and hits the tram tracks just right. We're trained by our environment to find order within density.

London taught me something else: depth. Those grey skies force you to look longer, to wait for the moment when light breaks through and transforms everything. The National Gallery became my second home—I'd spend whole afternoons studying how Rembrandt painted eyes, how Van Gogh made fur look alive with just a few strokes of thick paint.

And somewhere between those two worlds, I found my way of painting pets.

What the Eyes Hold

Here's the thing nobody tells you about painting animals: the eyes aren't just about colour and shape. They're about weight—the invisible heaviness of what those eyes have seen.

I painted a golden retriever last year named Hudson, a therapy dog who'd spent eight years visiting hospitals and nursing homes. The client sent dozens of photos—Hudson with kids, Hudson with elderly patients, Hudson looking impossibly gentle in every single frame. But one photo stopped me cold.

It was just his face. Late afternoon light, soft focus, nothing dramatic. But his eyes... they held something I couldn't name at first. A kind of tired knowing. The weight of all those rooms, all those beds, all those quiet moments with strangers who needed him.

I reached for my brushes and started mixing. Not yellows and browns—those came later. First, I mixed greys. Translucent layers of Payne's Grey and Raw Umber, building up the depth behind the iris. Because here's what I learned from studying the Old Masters: eyes aren't painted. They're built. Layer by layer, glaze by glaze, until light seems to come from within.

When the portrait arrived at its new home, the client emailed me: "You painted the part I couldn't photograph. The part that made him him."

That's the Hong Kong in me—seeing the layers. And the London in me—knowing how to paint them.

The Materials Matter (More Than You'd Think)

I get asked a lot: why can't you just paint from one photo and call it done?

I could. It would be faster. Cheaper. And completely wrong.

Because a single photo captures one moment, one angle, one split-second of your pet's existence. But your pet isn't a moment—they're a lifetime of moments stacked on top of each other like the buildings in my hometown.

That's why at Petpetpaw, we don't start with a brush. We start with questions. Dozens of them. What's the first thing they do when you walk in the door? Where's their favourite spot to sleep? What sound makes their ears perk up? What's the one expression only you've ever seen?

I call it "emotional mapping"—building a psychological portrait before I ever touch canvas. It's a practice I developed during my years in London, working with a mentor who specialized in human portraiture. "Paint what you know, not what you see," he'd say. "The seeing is easy. The knowing takes time."

Shanghai Light

Now I'm in Shanghai, and the light here is different again. Different from Hong Kong's tropical glare, different from London's northern softness. Shanghai light in autumn has this particular golden quality—warm but not harsh, like honey suspended in air.

I notice it most when painting ginger cats.

There's a client in the French Concession who commissioned a portrait of her orange tabby, Dumbo. The reference photos were lovely—clear, well-lit, perfectly adequate. But when I visited their apartment to drop off the finished piece, I saw Dumbo asleep in a patch of afternoon sun on their wooden floor, and I understood something I hadn't seen in the photos.

The light in that room was the same light I'd been chasing all my life. Warm. Layered. Patient.

I went back to the studio and started again.

Why This Matters to You

You might be reading this thinking: this is lovely, but does it affect my portrait?

Yes. Absolutely. Unquestionably yes.

Because when you commission a Petpetpaw portrait, you're not just hiring someone who knows how to paint. You're hiring someone who's spent thirty years learning how to see—through the crowded streets of Hong Kong, through the galleries of London, through the golden afternoons of Shanghai.

Someone who knows that a pet's portrait isn't about fur texture and accurate anatomy (though I'll give you those too). It's about the weight in their eyes. The tilt of their head when they hear your voice. The particular way light falls on them in your home, in your city, in your life.

That's what I paint. Not a picture of your pet. Your pet themselves, seen through eyes that have spent three decades learning how to look.