Children: You've got the cutest little baby face: From the moment it enters the world, today's infant is having its picture taken. Parents can immortalise a child in photographs, oils, clay - or on table mats. Madeleine Marsh reports

PARENTS - in particular those of new babies - have a natural tendency to believe that their child is the most beautiful creature in the world and an equally powerful urge to record its loveliness for posterity.

This begins with the birth itself, when the father's ability to focus a camera is almost as important as the mother's ability to push. Babies emerge from the quiet darkness of the womb to be greeted by an explosion of flashbulbs as relatives crowd round to photograph their every move. In many maternity hospitals, a resident photographer is on hand to provide a series of professional shots of your mewling infant, tastefully presented in pastel-coloured frames - blue for boys, pink for girls.

For many parents, the hospital photographer provides the first introduction to an industry devoted to the immortalisation of babies. Magazines and classified sections of newspapers are filled with ads offering a bewildering choice; you can have your favourite photo shrunk into a key-ring, or blown up into life-sized, three-dimensional photo-sculpture. The proud parent can eat from a plate glazed with baby's face, have their child's visage plastered on T-shirts, table mats and coasters, or made into a clockface. For pounds 7.19 the photographic counter at Boots will turn your child's picture into an 80-piece jigsaw puzzle. What this concept lacks in aesthetic appeal it perhaps makes up for in parental voodoo potential, allowing you to remove mouth, fiddling fingers, or any other part of your child's anatomy that is currently uncontrollable.

Becoming a parent seems to bring about a suspension of standards of taste, economy and modesty. While personal pride is a deadly sin, we are allowed and expected to be proud of our offspring. Representations of our children, whatever form they take, provide a means of externalising and communicating our love for them. Like all powerful emotions this has its dark side - lurking in the psyche of many parents is a stage-mother figure, desperate to thrust the child forward into the limelight.

This is cleverly played upon by in-store baby photographers, who have established a regular circuit in the heart of parental shopping territory, luring customers with the promise that their pictures will be entered in a beautiful baby competition. The concession for Boots and Mothercare is held by Portraits International, whose parent company is - a nice piece of irony, this - London International Group plc, producer of Durex condoms.

The great appeal of these photographers is their accessibility. 'We make photographing your child as easy as going to the greengrocers,' says Marc Keable, sales manager of Portraits International. They offer a free sitting, a standard package (three poses, three sizes, in several combinations) and no obligation to buy, although most clients pay the necessary pounds 30- pounds 50. 'After all,' Keable says, 'who wants to leave their children behind?'

It's an exhausting job for the photographer, who may do as many as 40 sittings a day, the majority of clients being under six years old. 'You've got to have endless patience and be a bit of an exhibitionist,' Joanne Logie says. She spends her day blowing raspberries and waving a furry yellow chicken in the air to produce the requisite smile, while carefully ensuring that her subject is centred - the two golden rules of a successful baby photograph. 'Between five and eight months old, they're brilliant - you will almost always get a smile and a good picture. Toddlers are more difficult. You have to gain their confidence to get that grin. Mothers tell them to say 'Cheese', which is useless and produces a hideous grimace. The best thing to do is to shout out 'Knickers]' That gets a real natural laugh.'

Logie puts her success rate with that allimportant selling smile at 90 per cent. Sittings take roughly five minutes, with Logie talking to the child constantly and offering fulsome praise after every shot - 'beautiful, lovely, brilliant' - causing the attendant mums to blush and giggle with pride as they mop the dribble from infant chins. People gather round to watch, and when the baby smiles so does everybody else - who could resist?

On the day I interviewed Logie, everything was going swimmingly with grin upon gurgle until she came across her one in ten. Little Louis was six months old, built like a pyramid, and bore a remarkable resemblance to Winston Churchill at a time when the war was going particularly badly. He looked pained by the raspberry noises, winced at the chicken, and stared transfixed with mute disdain at the camera. Mum, dad and photographer cooed, clucked, called out his name, and tickled his tummy; spectators and shop assistants willed them to succeed, but to no avail. Nothing was going to make Louis smile, and the only thing that prevented him running away was the fact that he couldn't walk. 'I did tell you that there was always one,' Logie said philosophically.

While most parents use their cameras for intimate, transitory moments, a professional photographer creates a more permanent record, not only in terms of the image itself, but also its presentation. 'Many of my clients hang photographs on the wall like pictures,' says Ruth Davis, a children's portrait specialist who photographs clients in their own homes. 'They want large prints - the bigger the better - and nice mounts, generally oval. Canvas prints are very popular, and they like you to add brushmarks and elaborate gold frames.'

At this level, the photograph aspires to the same status as a painted portrait, still the most traditional and expensive way of recording your child. According to Sir Roy Strong, the first separate portrait of a child in English art is Holbein's picture of the two-year-old Edward VI, presented to his father Henry VIII in 1539. Poor old Holbein - not only did he have an awe-inspiring father to please, but, according to many of the contemporary painters I spoke to, two is probably the worst age for a sitter.

'They're little monsters,' shivers Tom Coates, big, jolly and bearded, veteran artist of many children's portraits, and a parent himself. 'You want to get in there, do the job and get out again as soon as you can.' Coates is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, whose commissions bureau receives many requests for family and children's portraits, and can put you in touch with the best artist to suit your requirements. 'Some really enjoy painting children,' explains their adviser, Emma Davis. 'Others won't touch them with a bargepole.'

Portrait painters often prefer painting children at home rather than in the studio, since they are likely to be more at ease in their own environment. 'It's often better not to draw for the first hour or so and just get the kids to relax,' Coates explains. 'Mind you, once or twice I've told them to carry on naturally and they've got up and left the room . . .'

A photograph is all over in a flash, but paintings require the child to stay still for some time. 'In the past they used head-clamps,' muses Coates wistfully, but today's measures tend to be a little more gentle.

'You've got to make it into a game,' Margaret Foreman, a portrait painter, says. 'Out of a two-hour sitting, I'll expect to get perhaps 20 minutes in fragments. I'll sit on the floor and play with them, and paint from there. You make sure they've got their favourite toys nearby and story tapes can be a good idea. It's got to be enjoyable.'

An alternative is to plonk the child in front of a video - this can make even the wriggliest toddler sit still, but at a certain price. Watching Coates do a few rough sketches of my own two- year-old son temporarily immobilised by Disney's Winnie the Pooh, I realised with horror that my own most-beautiful-child-in-the-world had adopted the archetypal televison / village idiot face, eyes glazed over, mouth gaping open, a line of drool falling softly to the floor. I suddenly had a grim vision that in the same way that one might date an 18th-century portrait of a child from dress, expression and style, so future art historians would be able to recognise a late-20th-century work by that unmistakable couch-potato stare.

Coates himself is a firm believer in allowing movement into his work and like many serious portrait painters, generally prefers to avoid using photographs. 'There are a lot of artists who have lost this lovely speedy touch of drawing because of the use of the camera. Kids you know are going to be busy. They're always on the move, so why not let your drawings be on the move? If I were commissioning someone myself I would get them to come and spend the weekend and let them follow the sprog around. Perhaps you can catch them when they're asleep, or draw them when in the bath. It doesn't have to be a formal sit-in-front-of-the- camera type of portrait.'

Another major difference from the standard demands of photography is that the child is not obliged to smile. 'A smile is a transient thing,' says portrait sculptor Karin Jonzen. 'You don't get many laughing portraits and I think there would be something positively ghoulish about a perpetually grinning bust.'

Eighty next year and still working full-time, Jonzen has been producing sculptures of children for 60 years. 'My most interesting sitters have been older men and children. I think the reason is that up to the age of 12, and after the age of 50, they are so much more unselfconscious and natural. Women always want to look more beautiful than they are, children don't care what they look like.' She prefers children to come to her Fulham studio, where a portrait bust will take three one-hour sittings, or three half-hours for the under-twos (speed of execution is a considerable advantage for every children's artist). Automatic entertainment for the sitter is provided by the clay itself: 'They love fiddling with it.'

Jonzen likes to use clay for her busts of children. 'The texture of terracotta really gets that softness of skin and leaving the surface rough gives a sense of movement, edges look slightly blurred and out of focus.'

With pictures, many people choose pastel and pencil for children's portraits, because of the lightness and spontaneity of the media and the fact that they tend to come cheaper than oil paintings. However, Margaret Foreman relishes the possibilities of oil. 'It's like painting a peach. What you want to capture is their roundness and the feeling of the skin - the fat bits underneath the eyes, the light on the arms, the dimples and the smoothness of them.'

Like both the other artists, Foreman noted the peculiar tendency for children to look a year or two older in their portraits. 'I don't know why it happens - no one seems to exactly - but children generally grow into their pictures.' Whether for portraits or sculpture, some children enjoy the attention of a sitting while others won't cooperate at all.

Parental intervention can often only make things worse, as Coates demonstrated for me with a practised monologue: 'Now I want you to be on your best behaviour. No, you're not wearing that, I know you like it but you're not. When he says 'look at me', look at him, don't look away - yes, I know you don't like him and he's got a funny beard - but I've paid quite a lot of money for all this. No, you can't have an ice-cream now, you'll only make a mess, I'll take you out later but only if you keep still.'

'If a sprog doesn't want to sit,' he concludes, 'it won't, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.'

'Children must be allowed some say,' Foreman advises. 'Let them hold their teddy, wear their ballet skirt, or a favourite party frock - if they're not allowed any say in the portrait they will lose interest.'

Ultimately, it's the parents (or whoever commissioned the portrait) who must be pleased - and if you are spending anything from pounds 300 for a drawing to a couple of thousand for a formal oil portrait, who wouldn't want their child to be seen at its most attractive? 'Being a mum helps you to sympathise with what a mother might want,' Margaret Foreman says. 'I always think about my own son and how I would like him to look if someone was painting him.'

Coates is more rumbustious and more cynical: 'I think the perfect portrayer of children, whatever their medium, has got to be a liar, deceitful and everything. You've got to give the people what they want.'-

DIRECTORY

PORTRAIT ARTISTS

Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, The Mall by Trafalgar Square, London SW1Y 5BD (tel: 071-930 6844). The commissions bureau has photographs of work by all society members and can advise on style, media and cost. Like the other centres, they'll help draw up a shortlist and recommend that you visit the artists before a final decision. Contact Emma Davis for an appointment.

National Portrait Gallery, 2 St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE (tel: 071-306 0055). The gallery has a portrait advisory service consisting of about 800 files of photographs of the work of contemporary artists from established figures such as Lucian Freud to young students. Although they keep no details of prices, staff can help you make your selection and put you in touch with the painters. Anyone wishing to consult the files should telephone for an appointment with Honor Clerk or Robin Gibson. Their annual BP Portrait Award exhibition (June-Sept) provides a good opportunity to examine the work of contemporary artists.

The New Grafton Gallery-Portrait Centre, 49 Church Road, Barnes, London SW13 9HH (tel: 081-748 8850). Karin Jonzen and Margaret Foreman are both represented by the gallery's portrait centre, which was set up to bring together painters, sculptors and sitters. The list of artists includes work by both established and younger artists and prices vary accordingly.

Galleries Magazine, 54 Uxbridge Rd, London W12 8LP (tel: 081-740 7020) runs a 'finder' service, to put potential purchasers in touch with the right dealer, and might be able to suggest a good gallery or a useful contact in your area.

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Portraits International photographers operate in Mothercare and Boots throughout the country.

Its Salisbury head office (tel: 0722 412202) will be able to give you details concerning your nearest participating store.

Ruth Davis BA ACIB. 24 Boileau Road, London W5 3AH (tel: 081-997 5465). Photographer.

(Photograph omitted)