Art Pieces

Echoes From the Trenches

I actually drew this in like two hours of frantic drawing yesterday. I was originally just sketching a redraw, but I had my pens and I just decided to start experimenting with them, and TA-da my first all ink drawing, and I'm actually pretty happy with it :3

Okay, so everyone's favorite... BACKGROUND!
This is a drawing of my OG OC, Deacon. He is my second oldest OC, only bested by Ripple, but he's had a story somewhat plotted out for him much longer than she has. I'm not sure I'm actually going to write his story or make it a comic, but I DO intend on doing something with him eventually.

Anyway. Some more juicy context: Deacon is a British mercy dog in WW1. A mercy dog is a trained military dog they would send out to search for wounded soldiers. Some had vests that carried supplies so that the injured soldier could treat himself. But, ultimately the dogs were trained to locate the soldier, and if he were unconscious, they could take a piece of his uniform (a helmet, fabric, hat, etc.) and return to their handlers who would follow the dog to the wounded soldier.

There are some fascinating stories of these dogs running out into No-Man's Land and actually dragging soldiers back to the safety of the trenches, even after getting shot. I know that many nations in the war used Mercy Dogs, but I'm not entirely sure if the British did, so he may jump nationality (he was American until I learned that the Americans hadn't made a MWD program until WW2 and borrowed dogs from other nations in the First World War).

But yeah, here Deacon is running through No Man's Land after locating an injured soldier and is returning to his handler with his helmet. I've tried quite a few times to draw my OCs in the trenches, but I think this was the most successful of my attempts. I intend on doing a war landscape practice thing in the future, but for now I'm pleased with this.

Below is collage of 3 drawings of basically the same thing [a dog running through no man's land] I've done over the past few months.

And this leads me to two more things:
1. If you draw, you improve. It's as simple as that. I drew a lot between July and December, and the improvement shows that. And it's something I'm really proud of. And I ranted about improvement earlier, so I'm all spent on the subject for now, but
2. This is just an excuse to talk about my OC in the drawing in June. Her name is Caliber, she's a border Collie WW1 messenger dog in Deacon's unit, which I can rant about later, but yeah, so she's not the same character as Deacon who is in the June pic and the December pic.

Speaking of Caliber, one of my first digital art pieces was of her, and my skills have improved a lot since then.

This was when I was still figuring out my program and adjusting to drawing with a tablet. I may do a redraw of it in the future.