ARTWRK005 - Titled "911 Tribute Eagle"

The Story of the Drawing:

When 911 happened I was shocked and saddened, everyday people like me who just went to work that day like any other day, died a horrible death. My wife and I followed this news cycle intensly for the next few weeks, we went and saw the fallen towers in New York and I got inspired to do a tribute pen and ink drawing. The eagle is from one of our photos, the hat is from a photo posted in the papers of a worn down exhausted firefighter sitting with his head in his hands. I contacted the NY fire deptartment to get permission to draw the picture as I wanted to use the actual hat number. The rubble is from various photos of the 911 debris that were floating around. I have since given this picture to a few firefighters, but this drawing remains important in my heart because of the connection it creates with the events of that day.

I started by drawing a basic outline in pencil, with some more intricate pencil work on critical areas like the eyes and face area. Once I am happy with the basic lines I immediately start to draw with ink. I usually don't go back and pencil more, I just work straight form my inking pens. This can be a real challenge as there is no un-doing anything once the ink hits the paper. I used a combination of tools to draw with, but the main items are: Rotring Pens, Pigma Pens and some painted ink useing brushes. The original drawing is approximately 16x20 inches in size and drawn on heavy 300gsm watercolor paper.

Once the drawing is complete, we scan it at 800 dpi and process the scan to reflect the original as much as possible. We make a limited edition number of prints to sell. The small image size here really doesn't do the original justice, but its a fair representation.

Robert J Andersen

DETAIL IMAGE 1:

DETAIL IMAGE 2:

FINAL FULL DRAWING:

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