One of my favorite kinds of projects is drawing an entire team, so I was thrilled when a friend of mine reached out from the Portland-based writing studio, Thread Creative, asking me to collaborate on their annual holiday project. Each year they send out something special to all of their clients and they asked if I would draw Bad Portraits for their whole team, which would accompany a bit of advice from each member.

During this project I was on a long road trip, making it so I couldn’t draw the portraits in person, so we decided that each team member would send me a short video to show me their face and a bit of their personality. Watching the videos brought me so much joy and solidified by hypothesis that a person’s essence is much more effectively captured in video when compared to photo. Saved by technology!

When I completed each of the 28 hand-drawn portraits, they uploaded them to this amazing site they created to host the project, titled Hot Dogs Make Your Ankles Swell and Other Advice From Thread. That title should be an indication of how much fun I had getting to know these personalities via video.

Check out the finished project here! At the time, for each page that was viewed on their site, Thread donated a dollar to p:ear, a nonprofit creatively mentoring homeless youth in the Portland area.

I hope to do many more team portraits in the future! If you’re curious what that could look like for your company, send me a message!