We make portraits from photographs.

Since 1993 we made thousands and thousands of portraits.
Portraits of men, women, boys, girls, babies, horses, cats, dogs, houses, cars. You name it, we draw it.

We have our own studio in Manila where Rillet Javier runs the business and manages the freelance portraitists. Most of the artists work for us over 10 years.

All those years our basic principle has been unchanged:

You only pay if you like the result.

Therefore we can say that no one ever had a bad buy with us. We only have satisfied customers.
If you order with us you do not run any risk.

Try us out, we like to make a portrait for you too.

Product in short.

Technique
Our portraits are made from photographs. With brushes black graphite powder is applied on paper. A wide variety of brushes is used. All nuances between black and white can be made this way.

Size
30x40cm (11.8 x 15.75 inches) is our standard size. Smaller sizes are possible (minimum size: 18x24cm). We do make larger sizes than 30x40cm. The maximum size is 30x40 Inches. Ask for a quotation.

Finishing
After the customer approved the portraits they are finished with fixative so they will fade nor smudge.

more...

The charcoal portrait

In Manila where we have our studio, they call it a charcoal portrait. In fact no charcoal is used. We make the portrait with powder: deep black graphite that is quite different from the powder of charcoal sticks.

The artists paint with the powder while using a variety of brushes. With this technique all nuances of gray can be made as well as black and white.

The paper has to be highly absorbing to take up the powder. Therefore we use paper for aquarelle of at least 150 grams per square meter.
After approval of the scan by the customer we finish the drawing with high quality fixative so the customer and future generations will enjoy the portrait for centuries.
We have a slideshow of the different stages: from tracing to finished portrait for you. It is meant for people who think we make the portraits with a computer program (we don't!)

We are a "one product company". We only make this type of portraits.

The main reason is that it takes years to master this technique on a high level.
We work with highly skilled specialists. We are good in it, we have all the expertise working on a professional level since 1993. We know this type of portrait inside out.
Therefore we decided long ago to focus on this product.

It is the only way for us to have the 100% satisfaction guarantee: maintain our high quality by focussing.
That is one more reason to not work in colour.
With our type of portraits you only judge for:
- likeness and
- professional quality.
Only 2% of our customers disapprove the portrait (and do not pay it).
If we add colour to our portraits like pastel or oil, we cannot offer the guarantee anymore.

All-in price: £ 69 per head, person, pet or object. For more than one head on the same portrait, there is an additional charge of £ 47 per head.
Payment by Paypal (+/+ 4%)or bank transfer.
For normal orders no deposit has to be paid! You pay after you approve the portrait.
More about pricing More about deposits.

Product: hand-drawn portrait.
Black graphite powder with paint brushes applied to water colour paper. Standard size
30x40cm (11.8 x 15.75 inches).
More about the product.

Delivery time: about 3 weeks., if that is too long we can send you a high resolution scan within 5 working days.
You can use a print of the scan to give as a voucher for the real portrait.
More about delivery times.

The All-in price is £ 69 per head, person, horse or object. For more than one head on the same portrait, there is an additional charge of £ 47 per head/unit..
Prices are all-in: including 6% VAT, and including costs for shipping and packing.

For special requirements additional costs can be charged. In such a case we will send you an email with a quotation for the extra work before we take the order in production.

For rush orders we charge £ 10 extra.. We take your order right away in production and you have a high resolution scan within 5 working days. The portrait itself will be with you within 2 weeks.

You only pay if you like the portrait. More about the 100% guarantee.
More about deposits.

No deposits for normal orders.

We can ask a deposit in the following cases:

- sizes bigger than 40x30cm
- compositions, one portrait from different photographs
- orders for more than £ 100
- photograph is of very poor quality and the chance for a good portrait is minimal.

Deposits will of course be deducted from the total amount to be paid. But deposits are not refundable. In case you do not buy the portrait, the deposit will not be refunded.

Our delivery time is about 3 weeks.

It can take a bit longer if you want adjustments to be made on the first version of which we sent you the scan for approval.

Three weeks is too long if you want to give the portrait as a present next week.

We have an elegant solution for that problem:
Our portraitists give priority to your order and start making it right away. If the portrait is finished you will receive the scan for approval. If you approve it, you can pay it and you can download a highresolution scan.
That scan can be printed and be given as a voucher for the real portrait that will be delivered about one and a half week later.

This as a sample of such a scan.

We give a 100% statisfaction guarantee.

If you do not like the portrait we made, you do not have to purchase it and of course you do not have to pay anything.

Once the portrait is finished, we send you a scan per email and we ask you if the portrait is OK. If it is not what you expected we will adjust the portrait as indicated by your remarks. In case you do not like the second version either you can cancel your order at no costs.

You can also return the portrait after you payed it and received it. You have to send it back within 3 working days after you received it. We will refund the purchase price minus £ 10 for handling, shipping and packing costs.

Costs for rush orders will not be refunded.

The procedure: How it works.

In general we recieve your order through the order forms on this site.
You can sent us digital photographs with the form for digital orders or you can inform us that you will send us printed photographs by post.
If everything works well you will get a answer from a mail robot within a minute after you submitted the form. It tells you we received your order.
We will send you the next working day a confirmation of your order. It will also describe this procedure.

If you do not receive this confirmation than please contact us.

After you received our confirmation it goes on as follows:
- your order is sent to Manila
- one of our artists starts making your portrait
- once the portrait is finished the supervisor checks the portrait for likeness and quality
- if that is OK a scan of the portrait is made and sent to our office in the Netherlands
- again a check on likeness and quality is done
- if it is not OK the scan with comments is sent back to the studio in Manila
- if it is OK the scan is sent to you for approval.

If you are not content with the result you can tell us what you want to be changed. If we think we can adjust the portrait the way you want it, we will work on it to make it better. Within a few days you will have a second scan to evaluate. In high season it can take a week before you get the 2nd version.

If the second version is again not what you had in mind you can cancel the order without any costs.
We can give this guarantee because less than 3% cancels the order.

If you inform us that the portrait is OK then it goes on as follows:
- the drawing is sent form Manila to the Netherlands per courier. Once a week on Monday or Tuesday all portraits are sent. In general the portraits arrive on Thursday.
- if your payment is received the portrait will be sent to you by registered mail on the first working day after we received the portrait from Manila.
If your payment is not yet received you will be informed that the portrait is "waiting to be sent".

You can pay with Paypal or transfer the money to our bank account in the Netherlands:
65.35.57.701 (ING Bank)
IBAN number : NL8114.94.299.B01
ascription: Lebam Beheer B.V. Castricum, The Netherlands

You can order in two ways:

digital
- You can send us your digital image,
please use this form to send it.

by post
- You sent us the photo by post,
please fill in this form.

After submitting the form you will get an email from the robot within a few minutes. One working day later you will receive an order confirmation.

Information about address, registration Chamber of Commerce, and bank accounts can be found at contact.

Portraits International, history in short.

Portraits International was founded in 1993 in Manila

September 1993 Tom Klinkhamer, consultant in the financial industry, decided to start something completely different.
Together with a few friends a portrait company was launched: Portraits International a Philippine Corporation.
The idea was simple:
People bring a photograph to a shop. Portraits International makes a portrait in a low wage country and 3 weeks later the customer can get the portrait in the shop.

We choose Manila since it had 9 million inhabitants in 1993 of which most did speak English quite well.
Our first employee was the local artist Rick Javier. He became the manager of our Manila office in 1996, responsible for quality control and daily management of the studio.

The company was shocked at May 6 in 2006. Rick was playing basketball near his house. In the time-out he drunk a glass of water and then he had a cardiac arrest. A strong 42 year old friend and partner died all of a sudden.
Rick has been 13 years with us, made thousands of drawings and was a very dedicated husband, father and business partner. It is hard to believe we have to go on without him.
His eldest daughter Rillet runs the Manila office now, assisted by Rick's sister Rizalina and our most experienced artist Gil Ramirez.

From selling through shops to direct sales through the Internet

In 1993 we did not sell through the Internet because hardly anyone used it.
We sold through shops.
Big distributors in the Netherlands were:
- Kodak
- FotoQuelle
and in the UK:
- SupaSnaps

We sold through shops until 2004. Then we switched to direct selling through the Internet. Only FotoQuelle still sells our portraits through shops. 80% of our business comes from direct sales, straight to the consumer.

We now have 3 sites in the Netherlands:
- www.de-portretspecialist.nl
- www.portrettekening.nl and
- www.portretspecialist.nl

and 2 sites in Germany:
- www.portraits-nach-fotovorlage.de
- www.portrait-nach-fotovorlage.de

And we have two sites in the UK:
- www.portrait-from-photograph.co.uk and
- www.portraits-international.co.uk

Other sites will be launched this year in France, Belgium and Spain.
We will also launch a site for world-wide selling.

Our mission as a steady growth where we can maintain our high quality standards.

We are testing the possibilities of working together with a Dutch architect in making technical CAD drawings with draughtsmen from the Philippines.

Within a few months you will find the link here.

about this site

This site is made by Tom Klinkhamer.

Copyrights are owned by Klinkhamer Portretten in Zaandam, The Netherlands.

Our customers can use all images we made for them of course.
Others can use the images shown on this site only with our permission.

If you have any comments contact us.

Links

Kanlungan (it means shelter in Tagalog, the Philippine language)
A precious home for streetchildren in Manilla.
An excellent sample of how much can be achieved with only little financial resources and a lot of spirit and warmth.
Great people.

Rod Brown
from Canadian Spherica Incorporated located in Dartmouth Novia Scotia, eMarketing in the intuitive way, bringing buyers to sellers using the Internet. Rod advised me lately in case of copyright infringement by a competitor who used our charcoal portrait samples on their website without permission. Rod started a DMCA takedown for us and within a few days our images were gone from their site. Thanks Rod!

relatives

Jasper Klinkhamer architect , in Amsterdam.

Jonkman en Klinkhamer, architects in Amersfoort.

Indat in Groningen Robbert van der Eijk, specialist in data-entry.

Marlies van der Eijk-Klinkhamer, lawyer and mediator in Groningen.

Thali van der Eijk, graphic artist in Groningen.

friendly sites

Het Hemelrijk in Groningen, shelter for birds.

The best cat litter: Cat Country.

www.celinecommunity.com, a site for fans of celine Dion.

link exchange

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Quality directory of websites looking for link exchange. Improve your search engine rankings and link popularity the easy way. Work clever not hard!

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picture framer::
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