• @artboy68 100 portraits in 20 weeks

By a sequence of online connections which I can’t now remember, I got myself last year onto a list of subjects for an unusual online art project.  And yesterday my turn for a miniature portrait came up.  It’s just 2 3/8″ square, drawn from my WordPress gravatar.  Remarkable.

The artist is Scott Hamilton from Courtenay, British Columbia.  Three months ago, he embarked on a fascinating project to complete 100 (mostly miniature, mostly pencil) portraits in 20 weeks, almost all of his subjects being total strangers met via the internet.  Not only does ‘artboy68’ get the challenge of a new subject pretty much every day but he’s generous enough to do them in the first place, to share them on his blog and then to send them on to the individual subjects afterwards.  That’s a special kind of creative generosity.

Originally, the portraits were really miniature (just 1″ square), but soon settled on either a square format like mine or slightly larger oblong format (often 2 3/8″ x 3 1/8″).  Some are darker hued, some have a touch of pencil colour, but mine (no.64) is the only one so far to have a mountain background (no, it’s not Cornwall nor is it the view from Courtenay of the coastal mountains of British Columbia!).  Thanks Scott – a great New Year’s present.  Good luck for the remaining 36 portraits and for the realisation of your lifelong dream.

You can see Scott in fast-forward action on his fifth portrait below (he’s also uploaded six others).  You can follow him at http://artboy68.wordpress.com/ or at https://twitter.com/#!/artboy68.  The sequence of portraits is at http://artboy68project.wordpress.com/.