More Drawings!

Michael wasn't kidding when he said I was drawing up a storm. His cousin, Darlene, has been giving me critiques via Facebook. It's been giving me a kind of drive to draw as close to everyday as possible. I haven't felt inspired to draw in awhile, but this project has really given me new purpose with it.This first one is a couple of exercises she recommended, and they're my interpretation of her instructions. One was to draw an object inside of a box. For some reason the first mental image that came to mind was to draw a kind of "see through" box around the object instead of literally putting an object inside of a box and drawing it. After I finished I realized I might have made the idea more abstract than it needed to be. The ink drawing next to it is with Micron pens. The idea was to make a kind of "scheme" with the lines regarding shading and closeness of some of the objects. So the thicker, closer together lines are the dark shading while the thin, wide set lines are lighter shading.

This one is based off of a photograph of Darlene in her younger years after her baby girl was born. I love this picture, especially the faces. At first I was going to focus on the faces, but really liked how the baby's foot was caught in her shirt. It reminds me of the old paintings of Mary with baby Jesus. Michael even said, "You should put a halo around their heads and just focus on the heads." He agreed, though, that the leg and foot were a nice addition.

This is of Michael's hand with his watch and compass all in one. Next to his hand is a honey badger. We discovered honey badgers one night while looking at YouTube videos. We were talking about badgers, typed it into YouTube and the honey badger came up. These badgers take on lions, eat poisonous snakes, and run and run and run during the day. They also constantly eat. There's one video where a badger gets bitten in the face while killing a poisonous snake for food. He starts eating it, passes out for two hours from the venom, and then wakes back up only to begin eating again! Here's the link to this video. Essentially they're completely fearless. After watching these videos I told Michael if he were an animal he'd be a honey badger because he's that fearless.

This is of my feet while I was lounging in bed and had them crossed. I actually drew this really fast and Michael commented saying, "Feet are easy for you to draw." Michael mentioned my award in his most recent post. It's not the 5th highest, he got his numbers mixed up. It's the 15th, I believe. A link that goes into the order of precedence can be found here. It's airforce and army combined. A link to the history of the general commendation medal can be found here and specifically the joint commendation medal here.

I'm pretty happy for my award. I feel like I did work worthy of earning it (as the first sergeant said himself). It can be rather disheartening to see people get awards that are far above the actual work level they did. Several people were upset with that situation, but it's important to keep things in perspective. I can claim my award with a clear conscience and that's what's important. I went on between 400 - 500 missions during my deployment and wrote 75 awards, about 60 of which were given during the end of tour award ceremony. I also did the platoon sergeant's job when it came to his paperwork, etc. for about two months of the deployment. So I'm happy with the award and level of work I did. I grew as a medic, soldier, and person from this deployment so I'm happy with the end result in myself more than any award. As that's the reward that lasts a lifetime.

We hope all of you are doing well and we love you. Stay safe. TTFN.

R.