Many Thanks

Thanks to everyone for their comments lately, and thanks to Warrant Officer Mike Fay, who as you know is my "Dad" in the Combat Art Program (See his nice post today at Fire and Ice).

I've been getting my "sand legs" as he puts it, here in lovely Camp Fallujah, and soon will be getting out-- "outside the wire" so to speak--to spend time with various units fighting here in Iraq.

I also hope to get out and see & sketch some of the civil projects we're involved with, to show the side of the war that the press seems helplessly (willfully) incapable of showing the American people. It's beginning to seem more than a bit purposeful that they're not showing these things.

I’ll keep you all posted, as much as I can, on where I am and what I’m doing. I cannot get into any details, as you can imagine, given the operational security that is necessary in these matters.

I’m having trouble posting the images from here at Camp Fallujah, so I’m having to shrink them severely and email them to my wife, for her to post on the site (the shrunken size is why they're a bit hard to see. We'll try to remedy this, somehow.)

Here are two images I just completed. The watercolor is the second version of the Career Retention Office, an image I was intrigued with, due to the camouflage netting and the bomb part in the front (I love the unintended irony of that, given that one would think that this office would want people to be drawn to it, and yet it has this fake bomb and sign that says "NO PARKING ANYTIME"). They are great people, in that office, and helped me out by giving me a tour of the base and a nice stool to sit on when sketching.


The second piece is a quick ink sketch of a big armored truck and "Humvee" sitting side by side, waiting to go out on convoy. (I can hear the little humvee saying to the big truck, "Hey Spike! Ya wanna go out and chase Insurgents? Huh, Spike? Huh? Ya wanna...?)

Anyway, thanks to all of you… Semper Fidelis