Little Treasure, Lost and Found

Here's an old sketch I did while on my first deployment as a combat artist, back in 2006. It's of a young jundi (soldier), one Ali Muhammad Kathair, just before he goes out on patrol in his town of Anah, Iraq:

I'm glad we found it (my wife was organizing her new craft space and found it in some things-- we still have no clue how it got there!). I will submit it to the Combat Art Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, where it belongs.

Sketches like this one are very valuable, I think, because though they may lack refinement or be a bit "off," they are one of a kind records of something the artist saw.

This sketch and the photos I took were used as inspiration and reference for a portrait sketch I did later of the same subject: