soldiers in the dust PAGE 5 including commentary by David Bryant

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The colour of the powdery dust looks deeper and the addition of the two soldiers and the shrubbery in the right hand foreground has balanced the painting very nicely. In page 4 I could make out the feet of the main soldier but now I am struggling to see them. Not a criticism just an observation and I'm sure there is a reason for this.

This is an amazing painting - so evocative, gritty and real. A wonderful series celebrating the bravest of the brave.

Thanks Thea......in the main they are exceptional people.......it's a bit difficult to get your 'head around' a bloke who says to you " I 've never minded being shot at, but I can't abide artillery' .......so cool.

This is the final image and I was quite pleased with the result, with the addition of two figures to the left of the picture and more of the local vegetation on the right, to maintain a degree of balance in the whole image.......I was advised by the Regimental Sergeant Major that it is now compulsory for everyone to use ballistic specs because of the ubiquitous threat of IEDs (improvised explosive devices.) I hate the damn things as they have a tendency to mask eyes, which are precisely the thing that conveys much of the emotion in a picture of this sort. I have compromised with the main figure in that I have shown the specs looped onto the front of his body armour. When it is hot, they are a bloody nuisance and fog up much of the time, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a soldier would remove them temporarily.............. Simarly, you don't see as many men with items festooning the webbing on the front of there body armour as in the event of an explosion at their feet, it turns into just so much shrapnel and it was soon realised that much of the injury to the face was from this cause, so the policy was changed...........This is one of the things that can catch you out as an artist; the introduction of this policy will accurately date a picture; so showing a soldier with loads of stuff on his front in a picture from a tour in 2010 would immediately be picked up by the boys as not authentic........As I mentioned in an earlier submission, I made one or two mistakes on this one, so I will need to repossess it and correct a few points.......I sometimes wished I had picked a less demanding subject; still our boys and girls are worth it.