Heroes of the Salvation Army(revisited)

So Today I am going back to the first image I ever created that is a part of this series, Joe the Turk. This is to give you an idea of the work that goes into these pieces. There is more then meets the eye here. Between research and creation this piece took a total of 45 hours.  I also had some miss-starts with him.

First of all I had to find pictures of him. For Joe it was not hard. Some of these characters I have to take a total guess at it. But, he was very famous so there were several photos of him to work from. This photo below was one of my favorites. He was big and hefty, like me, being over six feet tall. That was considered a giant back then and this photo does give you a good idea of that.

This one and others gave me a base to go from. However, when I drew some starter sketches making big and strong it just did not feel right to me. Yes, he did fight for the injustice the Army was shown then, but he did it in a way that was both BOLD and humble. So when this image took shape it resonated with me. it started in pencil and once I had the details just right I drew over it in pen. Then I again went over it in pen after erasing the pencil and made the line bold as you see here.

From here I scanned it into my computer. Now, this was about one year ago. As an old school artist I would have to say I am still learning how to use the digital graphics program I have. And that is a steep learning curve. So much to learn. When I first did the color work I did it in a hurry and as a proposal for something else. The work I did, I did in a hurry to get the piece off. As a small(in size) illustration it looked fine. But, with this new project I am working on it would not. With posters comes larger prints and the flaws show up right away.

Way too dirty and way too blurry. So back to the graphics program it went. line by line and color by color I had to go back and completely re-draw him.




After Two more days of work he was done and better then ever. Of course knowing what I did wrong the first time means I don't do the same mistake again on future drawings. But, I imagine that there will be more changes as I learn new tricks of the trade.