Flashback 5

In the very early daylight I started work on this piece above of one of the quick response force (QRF) M-ATVs standing in its force protected area. I had spotted it in the late evening light yesterday, so I got the rudiments down this morning and then planned to hopefully knock in the shading at the tail end of today. I figured the evening light would be about the same.

After a cracking breakfast at what is considered, one of the best D-FAC in Iraq (love that smoothie bar), we packed up the entire four-artist gong-show into the back of a pick-up truck and drove off to find the mortar range. Can’t say I was very hopeful on how this day looked at the planning stage. We were to hook up with a few Marines supplemented by some (notoriously shy) Navy Seals for a mortar training session. It would take place in some less-frequented piece of Al Taqqadam Air Base. It is best to keep these mortar practice sessions well away from the base proper, and its flight lines. It looked to me like being a whole lot of standing around in the maximum heat of the day.

I am part of a group of four field artists here in Iraq representing the National Museum of the Marine Corps (NMMC) in Quantico, Virginia. We are two civilians and two active duty Marines (two teams with one of each). Two youngies and two oldies. The civilians being the oldies. Artist team One is made up of the experienced, esteemed, and gentlemanly illustrator Victor Juhasz, and SSgt. Elize McKelvey a reprographics Marine at the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia. In team Two, I am playing the role of the curmudgeonly Scottish/Canadian artist, accompanying Captain CJ Baumann, a Marine logistics officer at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia.

The temperature was just reaching its midday maximum plateau when we arrived. It would hold at that skin-peeling 110-degree temp for the next five hours or so. Two USMC mortar teams were set up in preset pits and trenches with an assortment of supporting Marines doing their best to look busy. Scattered through their numbers were an assortment of hairy, gentlemen in mixed uniforms and expensive looking gear, adopting a casual air of nonchalance. These were the Navy Special Forces blokes.There was some unclear hold-up that had most of the Marines actively not doing much. And it was hot. For those of us in the business of capturing life through surreptitious drawing it had all quickly become quite challenging. Partly this was because Marines don’t particularly want to be memorialized in pencil while just waiting around – standing by to stand by – as it were, even though this should be an actual USMC MOS.

In this situation all we can do as a field-artists is draw on regardless. So, we four artists spread out through the ranks, drawing, and feeling about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. Much of the art created in that first hour was not very good. I’d get a few hopeful details down and then the scene would shift and I’d start over. That is how I filled the first frustrating eight pages of sketchpad with nothing but scribbles of no consequence. Eventually word spread that the mortar firing holdup was because of an issue with incoming MV-22s shortly to be flying over from a nearby base. Nobody wanted to take a chance of accidentally downing an Osprey with a mortar round apparently. A highly unlikely possibility, perhaps, but still not worth the risk. So we all stood in the sun waiting. Is it bad when you start to see those little white dots before your eyes?

I pulled a bottle of water from the bed of one of the trucks. It was hot to the touch. Not exactly thirst-quenching, but my body sucked it in just the same. I decided to change tack and try drawing the Navy Seals. The problem of trying to unobtrusively sketch Special Forces is that they have incredible peripheral vision. Sensitivity to movement in the corners of their eye might well be essential in some of their more exciting deployments, but it was mostly a pain in the arse for the four artists sketching here. No sooner had my sketch begun than they would clock me scribbling and subtly shun me with a shoulder turn. I did get one slightly decent view while they all lounged inside one of their top-secret SF dune buggy golf carts, but this was a lone high point.

One of the SF blokes came over and had a word about how we could not take any photographs of them. He seemed nonplussed about the idea of sketches as well, until he saw one that Vic had done of him on the fly. So sketching was cool then. Just had to get past this peripheral vision problem. That kept me busy for another hour. Not my best work.

As the sun reached its zenith and tempers were at their most short, especially mine, the Marines finally started to send some rounds downrange. I talked my way into one of the mortar support trenches where I could see relatively well. There was still a great deal of standing around, but standing around with a mortar shell in your hands has a little more gravitas than standing around belly-itching. This sketch of LCpl. Orticelli I particularly like because of the professional detachment barely hiding the reasonable concern of sweating hands around live ordnance.

The others had done considerably better, especially yer man Vic Juhasz who does his most beautiful work when the subject is moving around. He calls it “gestural drawing,” (thankfully with a soft ‘g’) but really it might as well be chuffing witchcraft as far as the rest of us mere mortals are concerned. It works like this. Glance at subject for nth of a second. Scribble and swish, scribble and swish. Repeat over and over, with tongue sticking out of corner of mouth. End result -something that leaves part of me wanting to eat my pencil, and the other half contemplating stabbing him with it. Just lovely work, really, in conditions that would have most 65 year-old-men in a deck chair in the shade, napping beside a daiquiri and a Ludlum novel, Vic is out there moving like a tired gazelle from sketch to sketch to sketch. Bugger.

The top Seal eventually came around so much that Cpt Baumann and I copped a lift back in one of the specialized dune-buggy thingies, which was good because I wasn’t going to make it back otherwise. We arranged to stop by the special SF bunker at some point to pull together a quick portrait as way of thanks for this small kindness. Apparently, the main reason they didn’t want caught on camera was the concern that someone would pull them up on non-regulation facial hair. Totally legit concern really.

After that rubbish I took a nap using my Kevlar as a pillow in our recently acquired office space. Thank you to SSgt. Elize McKelvey for capturing that moment or so of hard-earned down time. In the late evening as the sun and the temperature went down I took myself back out to the QRF vehicles and finished shading the sketch I had started that morning. I had my back to the smoking pit so a steady stream of tobacco chewers and inhalers came by and had a look at what I was up to.

This is another thing about live sketching over other documentary mediums. The medium itself is such a great and joyous gateway into conversations and then friendships. In the end I don’t hate this one too much, but I am glad this day is over.