Quick sketch of a Mongolian infantryman in Kabul. Ink, 2013.
I’m still around, just been very busy here in Afghanistan.
I took animation briefly at CalArts in 2002 as part of the InnerSpark/CSSSA program… Aside from that, I can’t really say I’m an animator.
“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
- Yukio Mishima
Inkbrush, 2013.
Dernière Volonté - Soldat
Soldat! Écoute ton sens patriote
La victoire se fera de tes larmes
Soldat! Écoute la juste voix
Ton sang éclabousse notre histoire
Soldat! Les larmes de la vengeance
Punissent les traîtres vaniteux.
Soldat ! Écoute la noble raison
Ton combat juste de sens: innocence!
Another cold November morning on the rifle range. Drawing with two layers of gloves on is good practice. Ink and gouache, 2012.
As a general rule, weather on a Marine Corps rifle range is an amped-up, worse version of whatever weather is going on in the rest of the base. If it’s a little chilly out, the range will be an utter Fimbulwinter and have blasts of ice-cold wind. If it’s a bit warm and humid out, the range will be a steaming swamp and have constant downpouring rain.
And if it’s just really mild and temperate out, you’re going to get attacked by bees on the firing line.
Ink and digital, 2011. A quick look into some of the stuff I illustrate for the Marine Corps. This was done last year as kind of a rushed/sketchy job done one afternoon, but I thankfully had a lot of creative freedom with it. Some day I hope to have enough time to produce purely traditional media pieces inspired by the kind of work Col. Charles Waterhouse and other great combat artists from the Old Corps used to do.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Battle of Belleau Wood, I highly recommend reading up on it.
The ASVAB was pretty easy for me. I scored 89% out of 99% possible, despite being very weak in math. I made up for the math weakness in the logic-puzzle, mechanical/electronic and language skills sections. Why the DoD scores it on a 99% scale instead of 100%, I have no idea, but a 99% is considered “perfect enough”. One reservist friend of mine got a 99, and another pal from bootcamp got a 98 and went on to later become a Scout Sniper.
Since I graduated highschool in 2002 and was joining the Corps in 2008, I had to do some refreshing on my own time, which I think helped quite a bit. I’d simply suggest looking up some Youtube tutorials for whatever types of math you need the most work in, see if you can get the hang of it that way. I was a terrible, terrible math student until my last two years of high school, but when I taught it to myself many years later I found it to be not all that bad.
