Arte De Cubanos

The linocut class in a Tanjong Pagar shophouse ran on Saturday mornings, and the moment everyone waited for was the pull. You ink the block, lay the paper, lean your weight into the press, and then peel the sheet back slowly to see what transferred. Half the room would lean in each time.

One regular, a retired teacher, carved her poodle, Coco, every single week. Her prints got better, but she admitted the goal had never really been the print. She wanted Coco’s face on things she could use.

Printing has always been about putting images onto things

Woodblocks, screen prints, letterpress: the history of printmaking is the history of moving a picture from one surface to another so it can travel. Personalised pet goods are a recent chapter of that story, and the technique behind many of them is a cousin of what happens in a print studio.

Where sublimation comes in

Sublimation relies on heat and pressure to drive a design into whatever it is printing, and it is how Little Red Cute prints its harnesses, collars, leashes and bandanas. The shop is a place for personalised pet accessories singapore owners can create from one photo: the animal is illustrated from that photo and its name is added.

Alongside the printed pieces sit embroidery shirts and hoodies, where the pet’s face is worked in thread across the chest, and there is also an acrylic photo night light.

Questions from the workshop table

Do I need to carve or sketch anything? No carving at all. Send one photo, settle on one of the styles, and your pet is then illustrated straight from that picture.

Can I see a proof? More or less. The completed design comes up on screen, much like a proof pinned up to dry, and you sign it off before you pay. No sign-off, no production.

What makes a good source image? The same thing that makes a good reference for a print: clarity. Bright light, sharp focus and the whole face looking close to dead ahead. Phone photos are perfectly usable.

Where is it made? Here in Singapore, and only after each order comes in.

The last pull of the morning

The retired teacher still carves Coco most Saturdays, because she enjoys it. But the bandana Coco wore to the final class of the term carried her portrait, illustrated from a phone photo, and the room leaned in to look at it the same way they leaned in to every fresh pull from the press.…

For six Sundays in a row I sat at the dining table with a sketchbook and a stubby pencil, trying to capture Kaya, my black-and-tan mixed breed. Every attempt went wrong in a different way. The ears came out too big, the eyes too close together, and once, memorably, she looked like a startled otter.

Anyone who sketches will tell you that dogs are hard. They never hold still, their fur hides their structure, and the thing that makes them themselves, the tilt of the head or the shape of the brow, is exactly what slips away on the page.

What I was really trying to capture

I did not need a gallery piece. I wanted something with Kaya’s face on it that we could actually use, something that showed she was herself and not a generic brown dog. My sketches never got there, and the shop-bought bandanas in her drawer, with their stars and paw prints, did not even try.

How the bandana came together

In the end I handed the job to Little Red Cute and got a personalised dog bandana, with Kaya illustrated from a photo instead of from my shaky pencil. Here is how it went, step by step:

• Pick the photo. I went with a sharp phone shot taken by the window one morning, well lit, Kaya’s face fully visible and looking near enough at me.
• Upload it and choose a style. There are different looks to pick from for the illustration.
• Look over the result. This was the moment my sketches never reached: Kaya, recognisably Kaya, with her name added.
• Say yes, then pay. The shop makes nothing before that yes, and mine was produced here in Singapore once ordered.

The cloth itself

It is all polyester and closes with a buckle. The picture goes on by sublimation, a process any printmaker would recognise in spirit, with heat and pressure pushing the image into the fabric where I would have used a brush. Better still for Kaya, the cloth was made to be washed.

Sizing follows the neck. Small spans about 35–44 cm, medium about 39–51 cm and large about 42–56 cm. Kaya measured 37 cm, so S it was.

The sketchbook, retired

I still doodle on Sundays, mostly coffee cups and the cat next door. Kaya’s portrait, though, now sits on the bandana around her neck, and it looks more like her than anything I managed in six weeks. I have made peace with that. The otter drawing stays on the fridge.…

Leafing through a heavy book of eighteenth-century portraits on a wet Sunday, I kept noticing the dogs. A spaniel at a duchess’s feet, a greyhound leaning against a hunting coat, a pug glaring from a velvet cushion. They were painted with as much care as the sitters, and often with more personality.

Those dogs were status symbols, but they were also family. Their owners wanted them remembered specifically and recognisably, not as any dog but as that dog.

From canvas to everyday wear

Today most of us keep our dogs’ portraits on our phones, by the thousand. What we rarely do is carry the likeness out into the world. Pet gear leans toward generic decoration: paw prints, bones, the odd cartoon dog that looks like nobody in particular. It is pattern, not portraiture.

A harness that works like a portrait

Little Red Cute takes the opposite approach. Its personalised dog harness puts the face and name of your own dog on the chest, illustrated from the one photo you send in. The result sits closer to a portrait than a pattern: one particular dog, named and recognisable.

There is a sitting of sorts, though your dog never has to hold a pose for hours:

• One photo, sharp and evenly lit, with the face in view and turned near enough towards the camera. Phones are fine for this.
• A choice of illustration style.
• The finished design, laid out on screen.
• Your approval, which comes before any payment; until then, nothing is made.

The material side

Where an oil portrait is built up from layers of paint, this one relies on sublimation: heat and pressure carry the image into the fabric. The canvas, so to speak, is polyester with neoprene and mesh, fitted with a strap that adjusts, and it comes in XS, S, M or L. Every harness is made in Singapore once it has been ordered.

A note on composition, borrowed from those old portraits: the face is everything. A photo where your dog looks straight at you, in good light, gives the illustration the most to work with. Side profiles and blurry action shots lose the expression that makes the portrait yours.

A portrait that goes for walks

The duchess’s spaniel never left the canvas. Your dog’s portrait, on the other hand, heads out the door every evening, past the neighbours and the kopitiam, worn by the very subject it depicts. No gilt frame required.…