I had taken a break from drawing over Easter weekend and was really excited to draw something when I got back to school. I was so excited in fact that I couldn't wait for a chance to use my fancy drawing paper and art supplies instead favoring just using a standard 2HB .05mm mechanical pencil to doodle in a lined notebook. I had fallen in love with my Sandi Gepard character after I drew her the first time, so for a long time I had wanted to draw her again. Originally I wanted to draw her in combat firing her BAR at some unseen enemy in front of her, however before I started drawing I got a new and better idea. I remembered a photograph I saw once in a history book that showed an East German soldier jumping across barbed wire to defect to the West. That gave me the idea to draw Sandi in a similar pose. She didn't have to be jumping across barbed wire because she was already in the West, but the idea of her running with a war torn scene behind her had me captivated.
Originally, I wanted to give Sandi a kind of an angry look because she was supposed to be in combat. Eventually my combat idea changed to just her running to her post, so the kind of scared angry look I was planning to give her turned into a sullen depressed one. I wanted to find a photo of post-World War II Berlin that was just as sullen as Sandi's mood, and I didn't have to look hard to find one. The building of the Berlin Wall must have really crushed the German people, and traumatic scenes of escapes to the Western side of the wall were really shocking to look at. It reminded me about just how horrible war can be to civilians. Even though there were plenty of photos of the Berlin Wall on the Internet I had a tough time finding one that would make a good background for my drawing. I couldn't use most of them because either the camera angles at which the photos were taken were no good or there were too many people in them. I couldn't have any people in the foreground of the photo because an athropomorphic cheetah girl would look out of place amoungst them. Finally after three hours of searching I found the perfect photo and added Sandi to it. At first I was going to greyscale Sandi so that she would match her black and white background, but I loved how she jumped out at you when she was left in color. I called this drawing "Cracked and Torn" because Sandi's heart is ripped apart just like her city's. I am very proud of this drawing and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.
The pencil work was done on college ruled notebook paper with a .05mm mechanical pencil with 2HB lead. It was than cleaned up, darkened, and softened in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.02. I then printed it out on standard Georgia-Pacific FAX/Copy paper and colored it with Crayola colored pencils. The lettering was done with Paint Shop Pro 7.02.
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