Allison has long been recognized as one of the premiere crappy portraitists of her generation. Patrons note her delicate use of crayons and bold marker technique. Though her own mother refused her childhood art for being "too crappy", like all great artists Allison was simply ahead of her time. Finally, her work is being given the proper forum for wider appreciation. Enjoy the work of this delicate genius.
Portrait by Eric P.
Alyssa has been a terrible artist since the first time she picked up a crayon. She failed every art class in grade school, even the ones that required simply gluing a bean to a woodblock. Since those formative years, she has developed as a person and maintains a successful professional career in Chicago, while somehow not having developed in the slightest as an artist. She also enjoys extreme sports, gnomes, and copious amounts of alcohol. Her works are recommended for the hardcore crappy art-loving connoisseur.
Portrait by Roz D.
Ashley is an accountant, so she obviously needs a creative outlet that doesn't require actual creative skills. Along with being rather logical, she also giggles maniacally at natural wonders like geysers and thunder, and loves to spend her time traveling with very little money, and perusing record stores for things like Bonnie Tyler and Jefferson Airplane. She draws almost exclusively with colored pencil, mainly so she can repeatedly use her globe-shaped pencil sharpener, and (so far) never throws her finished portraits away.
Portrait by Leah W.
Cheryl is the lovely rainbow-haired Scottish lass and 'owner' of sherixfirefly. When she's not sewing crafty goodies she's playing with her uber-pesky baby dumbo rats or boring her fiancee Jen with yet another horror movie. Cheryl is zombie obsessed and determined to marry Marlon Brando... him being dead is only a minor set back.
Portrait by Jen
Christie always been interested in art and drawing from a young age. She is an eclectic primary school teacher who loves bike riding, vintage clothes, thrift stores, and blogging about fashion, life, and everything in between at www.christie86.blogspot.com. Christie is also a feline lover and her cat Mary is an impressive 17 years old. She lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband Scott. Her life goal is to become a mother.
Portrait by Sarah
Claire's artistic debut began whilst working at a lockdown mental health facility for teens, doodling throughout morning meetings to stay awake under the excuse of creating educational posters. Escaping the clutches of burnout, she romped around Australia, volunteering on farms in the wake of the Queensland floods. She moved to Los Angeles, discovered FCP in September 2011, and currently rejoices in once again finding a venue for her drawings. Claire writes whimsically on her blog at Fig Frame, and lives with her kick-ass partner and their two cats Mooncalf and Anglerfish.
Portrait by Kristin Farr
Cortnee spent her entire childhood drawing with crayons, but only recently fell in love with it again during a babysitting gig. She's been putting this rediscovered talent to good use with FCP since September of 2011. Cortnee loves to bake, cook, eat ... well pretty much anything revolving around food. She is also fond of knitting, DIY projects, and college sports.
Portrait by Christie
Jennifer grew up hearing from her mother that she was destined to be an artist because she was left-handed. This eventually led her to helping out FCP in January of 2011. She usually draws during her lunch hour at work and after drying up all the office highlighters, was forced to purchase her own. Jennifer loves loves colorful things except for her own clothing, which is mostly black (blame twelve years of Catholic school) but she isn't goth. She lives in California with her daughter and her unhealthy obsession with the Red Sox.
Portrait by Sasha
Jill actually used to be considered good at art but peaked early and fell behind as others flourished. A long stint in a private school stifled her creativity, but creativity lay dormant, slowly growing strength. Now the creativity bursts out of her in uncontrollable and unpredictable fits - just like underage wizards with their magic. This pent up creativity often makes itself known in half-finished sewing projects that inevitably get thrown out before they're complete because they clutter up her freakishly tidy room. Rarely will a texta be used following the traumatic incident where textas were banned from her fancy primary school after Grade 5.
Portrait by Sally
Josh is a Texan journalist. When he’s not worrying about AP style, he likes creating things out of jettisoned materials such as pizza boxes, candy wrappers and newspapers, some of which are also repurposed for his blog, Detritus 2. Since the local coffee shop is his second home, don’t be surprised if a coffee cup sleeve appears in your crappy portrait. He also daydreams about performing various barn burners because he is truly his karaoke mother’s son.
Portrait by Kris K.
Kelly is a graphic designer (she has a website coming soon) from the unlikely locale of rural mid-Michigan. She loves movies, books, making things, and a good cup of tea. Her husband lives in South Korea at the moment due to military obligations, but they both get to move to Italy next year.
Portrait by Yasmin
Kristin submitted a picture to FCP in September of 2010. After she received her portrait, she featured us in KQED Arts and offered to do a guest spot. We were smitten with her once she told us "In my mind, you look like giant crayons who give hugs." Since then she has been a regular fixture around here and we couldn't be happier about it. She's from California, makes super-cool art (like glitter deer, magic mountains, and rainbow skateboards) at kristinfarr.com, and writes about art and artists in magazines. We almost hate to tear her away from her art-making, but Free Crappy Portraits would be amiss without her.
Portrait by Alyssa
Madyson is an occasional crafter and full-time animal lover. She wishes she could hip-hop dance, do karate, speak French and play the ukelele - but not all at the same time. She is infamous for her yawn-burps and addiction to Jeopardy. She loves songs with whistling, books about zombies, ghost hunting, board games, stuffed animals and dairy products. She is on the brink of being a crazy cat lady and hopes one day to own a pet llama.
Portrait by Dani P.
It's no coincidence that people who love crappy pictures of themselves also intensely love cats. To aid in this feline influx, Nick joined the FCP ranks in April of 2011. Not only does he love cats, but the fatter the better. On a daily basis, Nick will mention aliens, conspiracy theories, vinyl records, old cars, city landscapes, food, Seinfeld, old school rap, the movie Splice, the Beatles, succulents, and medicinal plants.
Portrait by Sarah
Rachel lives in in San Diego with her fiance, Jason. She likes baking, photography, travel, and red wine and really really really likes chocolate, spa days, and puppies. Rachel's favorite colors are purple and Robin's Egg Blue. People like to talk to her about the color of her hair. Is it red? Is it brown? Sometimes these conversations turn into arguments, which is pretty dumb in her opinion. Like who cares?
Portrait by the artist
FCP founder Rj is a filmmaker and videographer. Currently he is working in Japan. Rj is diabolical at Scrabble, a master of disguise, and is the living embodiment of absurdity. He prefers conceptual crappy portraits that will lead to discussions between the subjects as they try to determine what the hell he was thinking.
Portrait by Jessica S.
Sara converted to FCP in August of 2011. She is from the butt-crack of Alberta, Canada and is a professional tumbleweed spotter. She spends her days writing in her blog Girl Untitled and eating rice cakes. Sara is married to Ben, whom she met in a teepee. He is an accomplished skateboarder and a Facial Hair Growing Champion several years running. Sara's drawings are wonderfully and hilariously detailed though Ben will draw nothing but narwhals.
Portrait by Jim
Formerly from small town Illinois, Sarah is a graphic designer living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She likes baking, birds, watercolours, roller skating, and volunteering. A popular trivia fact about Sarah is that she has had over 200 cats since she was five years old. Her experience with drawing nude models in art class really comes in handy for those racier submissions.
Portrait by Lindsey K.
Selina is a very bored college student with too many markers! She loves FCP, shiny things, eating food, and obscure movies. When not using up her free time by doodling, she's listening to music and putting together her weekly radio show for her college station. She always wears striped toesocks and narrates her hyperactive dog 24/7. It annoys everyone around her.
The very talented Sindi is South African and lives in a (town in a) forest. She is studying to be a math/English teacher and she draws pictures as part of her lecture notes. Sindi simply adores cooking, maths, Lord of the Rings, brightly-coloured daisies and sushi. She and her sister Hannah want to open up a BookCafe where they will get people to draw crappy portraits for the walls.
Portrait by Sara T.
Tera drew her first crappy cartoon at the tender age of five. She began drawing lovely non-crappy cartoons for FCP in May of 2011. Tera loves zombie movies, drawing, painting, sewing, knitting, decorating cupcakes, and blogging at Terasue.com. She is a site producer for Disney Parks during the day, but her dream as a kid was to become a lounge singer. Currently Tera lives with her dog Emma and her bearded boyfriend Lance, though she cannot wait until she is a quirky old woman living in a pink house with flamingo lawn ornaments.
Portrait by Lance
Free Crappy Portraits was started in Chicago, Illinois during the summer of 2008. The set-up consisted of a folding table decorated with streamers and balloons to attract attention, a handmade sign, and a bagful of M&Ms to lure people in.
Thus the drawing began! Park-goers sat in picturesque spots in various poses for us, who would alternate or occasionally team up on the portrait. Just to make things interesting, the artists would ask questions such as "What animal do you wish you could fight?" or "What is your most unique talent?" and the results would humorously work themselves into the drawing.
Despite repeating these Free Crappy Portrait sessions week after week, they never lost their magical quality. Drawing a quick and crappy five minute portrait for a complete stranger sort of became a little talent show. They drew everything from a gentleman wanting to draw him feeding squirrels out of a bag of nuts to a group of musicians who wanted a flyer drawn for their band. It was always exciting and hilarious and everyone involved had a great time.
Then sadly one afternoon they were unceremoniously kicked out of the park for not having a permit. Also at this time, Sarah was moving to Canada. Not wanting to give up the fun, she proposed a Free Crappy Portraits website that took photo submissions from the entire world. Despite the impersonal experience the internet can impose, we try keep the same values as when we were drawing people in the park: everything is free — we don't even sell ad space to make money. The site is paid for and updated buy us with our own money and we plan on keeping it that way. Right now it's all about discovering thos magical little glimpses into other people's lives, making ourselves and others laugh, and being curious as to how far this project will go. Free Crappy Portraits has since added other artists from around the globe ranging from professional artists to those just interested in trying out a new box of crayons.