This Artist Defies Disability By Drawing With Her Foot, Here Are 30 Of Her Best Portraits

Life is wonderful, but oftentimes, challenging. Therefore, happiness is a decision. Fatemeh Hammami Nasrabadi decided to be happy, accept her disability, and pursue her passion in life.

This brave and determined young woman from Kashan, Iran, is 85 percent paralyzed, but she uses her feet to draw incredibly detailed portraits. Her art shows that no condition of illness should limit our lives and stop us from dreaming.

The 31-old is a huge football fan, so her portrait of Cristiano Ronaldo brought her fame and she became an internet sensation. The Portuguese football star even promised her to personally see her art whenever he visits Iran.

She explains:

“My interest in football made me draw portraits of famous world football players, including Ronaldo and Messi. My friends helped me send a photo of the portraits to La Liga. La Liga appreciated this and sent me a Real T-shirt.”

She has painted her favorite football icons, as well as numerous other national and international celebrities, including Selena Gomez, Charlie Chaplin, Mehran Modiri, Dariush Arjomand, Jamshid Mashayekhi, and Parviz Parastui.

Although she also creates colored pencil sketches of animals and landscapes, the Iranian girl explains that she finds portraits the most interesting.

In middle school, two teachers discovered her talent and helped her perfect her skills during the years. Fatemeh has over 114K Instagram followers, where she shares her technique and snippets of the drawing process to inspire others.

She says:

“I love painting faces. When I want to draw a portrait, I start with a curve and round the human face for the beginning to design. This is the law of face painting.

The biggest challenge for me is that I have an 85% disability and that makes it very difficult for me to paint. I only work with one of my legs.”

Fatemeh was the second-born of twins, so her severe disability was a result of the oxygen deprivation at birth.

However, the hard-working and talented artist was determined to dream big and she has become a popular name in the Iranian art scene. Her amazing works have been exhibited all around Tehran.

One of her fans commented that “she can draw better with her feet than I can with my hands”, pointing out that she reminds us that “we can do anything we set our minds to!”

Fatemeh also writes, and she has three published books so far.

She adds:

“I have been interested in painting and drawing since I was a child and I tried very hard to get here! I am happy and thankful that my efforts were worth it and now I am happy that I did not disappoint.”

She explains that she dreams of becoming famous so that “everyone who comes to Iran” comes to see her and her work.