Thursday, April 15, 2010

More Sketches

Ok, here's a few more caricatures I've done over the years:

This one was done for the retirement of Col. Spencer - a good friend of mine and the leader of the Officer Christian Fellowship at Camp Pendleton for many years. As you can see, he's leaving the 2-star headquarters where he worked to pursue his love of surfing & fishing. I thought about having him wearing a tropical-themed swimsuit, but decided that that would probably demean the uniform. This was probably the first one I did for an individual, and I think it's probably my best work in terms of what he actually looks like.


This one was done for a good buddy of mine, Capt. Phill Bragg. He's now been selected for Lieutenant Colonel and is the acting Regimental XO for 11th Marines. Here, he was the CO of Romeo Btry, 5th Bn, 11th Marines and had just returned from OIF. Note the old-school M198 howitzer (the Marines now use the M777 Light Towed Howitzer) as well as the frosty pint of Guinness (for strength!).

This one was done in Germany for the Staff Judge Advocate at MARFOREUR. I think I overdid it on his neck length, though. If you click on the picture and enlarge it you can read the book titles.

This is one of my favorites, and also the one that took the longest to do. "Lex" is the host of Neptunus Lex, and I've been privileged to meet him on a handful of occasions. When he posted something on his blog about retiring a few years back, I figured that this was the least I could do for him since I had been enjoying his website so much over the years. As it happened, I was able to come to his retirement party at an Irish pub in San Diego and present it to him in person. The toughest part was surreptitiously finding current unit's patch (all the others are on his site) and then getting all the details right, even down to the "piddle pack" behind his ejection seat!

This last one is also my most recent, presented just yesterday. Eric Knowlton is an old friend of mine - we went through The Basic School together as 2nd Lieutenants back in 1994-95. While I was going through artillery school at Ft. Sill, I got a request from Eric wondering if some of us would be able to drive down to Dallas to do the sword arch for his wedding. That was the last I'd seen or heard from him until I ran into him at the Miramar PX a few months ago, where I learned that he was the Maintenance Officer for the new V-22 Osprey squadron. Last Friday, I took him up on his offer to show me around and brought the family down to the squadron. Eric was an excellent tour guide, and took us all out to the flightline and let Rachel and Dash climb up inside one of the Ospreys and look around. He then took us over to the simulator building and let us each take turns "flying" one of them around San Diego. As a token of my appreciation, I drew this for him and presented it to him yesterday afternoon.

4 comments:

Michelle Morgan-Coole said...

Nice.
I remember when you first posted Lex's on TFD. But it didn't strike me how long his neck was until today. So would that be a fairly accurate representation? :D

Justthisguy said...

Major, shame on you! Posting Cap'n Lex's True Name on the Net! Yah, I found it out a long time ago, but I don't noise it about. Next thing you know, somebody'll post mine! This is a courtesy thing, to protect us from the sillier sort of doodahs. I'm sure that some annoying perseverance could find mine fairly easily, which is why I try not to be so obnoxious as to inspire people to do that.

Justthisguy said...

P.s.I just left another comment on yer March 6 post, just sayin, in case you were not automatically notified. It was about security clearances, and how they were not always done right.

Dave Harvey said...

Alright JTG, I went ahead and took his name out - not that it's not available elsewhere, as you pointed out. I think I learned it by reading the name tag on one of the photos he posted of himself long ago.