If you’re looking to have some goofy fun while quarantined in your own home, how about investing in a high quality portrait of your pet as a pompous royal?

Enter Crown & Paw, a company dedicated to helping pet owners honor their bundles of joy by creating hilarious digital portraits of them as generals, princes, or ladies, whatever title the client desires. The company curates a collection of authentic 19th century portraits and rare Renaissance era oil paintings, and combine them with pet portraits to hilarious effect. Seriously, just look at the examples below.

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Over the years we’ve featured some impressive hyper-realistic art on Oddity Central, but when it comes to animal portraiture, I’m pretty sure Canadian artist Nick Sider takes the cake.

Nick Sider knew he wanted to be an artist since he was just 5-years-old, but it took him another 20 years to build up the courage to dedicate his life to painting. At the age of 25, he quit his job and started teaching himself how to paint with acrylic paints. Looking at his works, you would think Nick has decades of experience behind him, but he’s actually only 31-years-old, so to say that he made up for lost time in just six years would be a serious understatement.

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If you’re looking for someone to make a realistic, three-dimensional portrait of your pet cat using felt wool, you’ll have a tough time finding someone better than Wakuneco. Just have a look at what she can do with a needle and wool thread.

Looking at some of the feline portraits created by the talented Japanese artist, it’s hard to believe they are made of felted wool and not taxidermy masterpieces. To achieve this level o realism, Wakuneco – which translates as “frame cat” – spends hours on end poking at wool with a needle to create solid layers that mimic cat fur, applying realistic glass eyes and finally adding the whiskers. After everything is just as she wants it, the 3D portrait is framed and sent to the owner who commissioned it.

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Looking at the detailed leopard portrait below, you’d be inclined to think Franziska Treptow is a photographer. Every detail, from the tiny hairs of the animal’s fur to the reflection in its eyes, is so perfect that it’s almost impossible to believe that the young German artist paints or draws every one of her artworks.

Franziska’s ideas start as sketches and photos of wildlife. Using her skills in digital photo manipulation technology (Photoshop), she creates a digital model for her works, which helps her become aware of the composition and accentuation of light and shadow. She then sketches that model on paper or canvas and uses pencils or paints to create the ultra-realistic animal portraits exclusively by hand. The whole process, can take anywhere from a few hours to more than a month, depending on the complexity of the project. The end result is always breathtaking.

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