The Little Things Your Pet Does

Quieter, on purpose. There is one small rescue at the centre — a dropped glove that only your pet goes back for — and the rest is one ordinary day: the wait at the door, the lamp post, the bench, the sofa. The pleasure is recognition. Nothing frightening happens anywhere in it.

You are. The book is written to the person on the other end of the walk, and that person is never drawn. The pictures are painted from your side of the day — the doorway at first light, the kerb, the found glove held up to you — so the pet looking up is looking up at you. Read aloud to a child, “you” becomes whoever is holding the book.

It sticks to the ones almost every animal shares — waiting, the breakfast fuss, checking the same spots on the walk, circling before bed — and paints each one the way your kind of animal actually does it. The one thing it takes on trust is the walk itself: a cat who never leaves the house borrows the neighbourhood for the day, and the wait, the stare, the lean, and the circling are all theirs. Any animal that can come on a walk can star — a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a bird, a horse; a pet that lives in a tank cannot, and each book’s page says which animals it fits. The likeness comes from your photo; the dedication page is where you add the habits that are only theirs.

You will see before you pay. Upload one photo and we paint their cover, free, in about a minute — if it is not them, paint it again or try another photo, and you have spent nothing. In the book we keep the details that make them theirs: face shape, ears, coloring and markings, carried through every page. A sharp, well-lit photo of their face gives the best likeness, and a person on our team compares the finished pages to it before printing. If the pet inside the book is not the pet on the cover you approved, we repaint it or refund you.

One pet, facing the camera, in good light — daylight near a window is ideal. We work from what we can actually see, so a photo where the face, coloring, and markings are sharp gives the best likeness. Avoid heavy shadow, a busy background, a costume, or a photo with two pets in it. A phone picture is completely fine; it just needs to be in focus and not cropped so tightly that the head is cut off.

Yes. We generate the illustrations with AI from the photo you upload — it is not painted by hand on paper. Every book is checked by our team before it goes to print, and we never use your photos to train AI models.

It is used to make and check your book, and then we keep it — your photo, what you typed, and the files painted from them — so we can reprint your book if something goes wrong and make your next one without asking for the same photo twice. Ask us to delete it whenever you like: email support@illustratedyou.com, or ask us to close your account. No public gallery, no advertising without asking you first, never used to train AI models.

A 40-page, 8.5-inch square hardcover printed to order for one animal, painted from your photo on every page, with their name on the cover and a dedication page in your words. A person checks it before it prints, shipping in the U.S. is free, and if it arrives damaged we replace it free.