Nicole Scragg carefully scrutinized the iconic image of Portland Timbers forward Fanendo Adi reeving a chainsaw that was displayed in front of her on an iPad. She then dipped her paintbrush into a green watercolor mixture and turned her attention to the canvas in front of her.
Scragg began avidly following the Timbers with her husband, Reece, back in 2014, but it wasn’t until last September that she had the idea to combine her passion for the Timbers with her love of painting.
For the last five months, the 22-year-old has been painting watercolor portraits of Timbers players and posting pictures of them to Twitter. Paintings of Nat Borchers, Diego Valeri, Darlington Nagbe and Vytas are hung up in her home in Vancouver – and the portrait of Adi will soon join the others on her wall.
“I definitely want to try to paint the team roster,” Scragg said. “I don’t know how possible that will be as they continually change and they’re a lot of them, but I definitely want to keep everyone included.”
Nicole Scragg recently painted a watercolor portrait of Timbers forward Fanendo Adi. Courtesy of Nicole Scragg
Scragg, who fell in love with painting after taking a class at Clark College in Vancouver, started creating portraits of Timbers players as a way to practice painting faces in watercolor. The endeavor quickly grew into a passion of its own and became a new way for Scragg, who is only able to attend around four games a year, to connect with the rest of the Timbers fan base.
Her first portrait was of Borchers, a fitting subject for Scragg, who has an orange cat named Cat Borchers with its own Twitter handle: @cat_borchers. She had an opportunity to show Borchers the painting – a watercolor portrait of him holding the MLS Cup – at a meet and greet in Vancouver in November.
From there, she started to pick out players on the roster by number and found photos online of each player to replicate. She painted a portrait of Valeri holding his hand out to the crowd, created a watercolor painting of Nagbe and his daughter Mila holding hands at Providence Park and painted a close-up portrait of Vytas.
She has posted each finished painting to Twitter and said, through her artwork, she has been able to start to connect with more Timbers fans. When it came time for Scragg to start her most recent painting, she asked fans on Twitter which player she she should paint next before deciding on a portrait of Adi.
Nicole Scragg has been painting watercolor portraits of Portland Timbers players. She hopes to paint the entire roster.Jamie Goldberg/Staff
“Being involved with other supporters and involving my paintings with that, it’s something that I never thought could be a thing,” Scragg said. “It’s really cool to be able to combine both loves.”
For now, the paintings hang on Scragg’s wall, but she hopes she can ultimately give at least some of the portraits away to the players. She especially hopes she can give Nagbe the painting of him and his daughter.
“I think it would be fun to give them away,” Scragg said. “I definitely want to try to get the Nagbe painting to him, just because it’s more personal to his family… I definitely want to share that with him.”
— Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com
503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg
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