The most dreaded part of art education for many students is learning to render human hands.

But in the Bay Area, maybe they should be spending a bit more time perfecting paws.

Among a set of art and animal lovers with a certain level of disposable income, commissioned pet portraits are gaining popularity. And there is perhaps no better place to be painting pampered pooches than San Francisco, where there are more canine residents than people under 18: about 120,000, according to city Animal Care and Control.

"People would rather have their dog painted than their child," says Alina Kremer, an artist who has been painting pets for four years.

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“Here in the city there are a lot of people who have money and dogs -- and they're crazy about them,” she says.

These portraits are not what Kremer would characterize as "a necessity." But the demand is high.

It’s hard to quantify the market for pet portraits, but it seems to be growing: American pet ownership itself has risen nearly 40 percent over the last decade. And amid an otherwise flagging economy, the pet industry has soldiered on — growing, in fact, by 5.4 percent in 2009, according to the American Pet Products Association. Nationwide spending on animals is expected to balloon to $70 billion in 2014.

Economic pressures might actually be helping the medium along. “Out-of-work artists are branching out into something more marketable,” says Anna Thiel, owner of Jeffrey’s Natural, an upscale pet food store in the Mission and North Beach that is currently exhibiting the work of Laura Lannon, another pet artist.

They aren't cheap, but pet portraits are a somewhat more affordable entry point into commissioned artwork than other options. A survey of local artists indicates that the portraits tend to cost between $200 and $600 depending upon the size and complexity of the piece.