Commencing Countdown, Engines On...

In just over a month from now Shaun O'Mara and myself will be heading to Afghanistan. We've received our embed approval from the Canadian Forces and ISAF. Our body armor has arrived (thanks MS), helmets and protective eye-wear provided (thank you RH, PK and stores!) and our plane tickets are booked (thanks GL). We've depleted our entire budget on airline tickets so from here on out, we're begging, borrowing and borrowing (without permission). Luckily, there are not a lot of expenses once we're out in the forward operating bases otherwise we'd have to fall back on bake-sales (although that is not entirely out of the question).


As I've stated in other posts, we (Shaun and myself) are very, very fortunate to have generous and supportive friends and family. The Hon LCol of the Royal Westminster Regiment, Karen Baker-MacGrotty has gone out of her way to help us raise funds, awareness and promote our cause. The guys in stores, support from the CO and old friends helping with flights in/out of Kabul all amounts to the start of a successful project. This is the power of the social network.

Our focus over the next couple of weeks is to improve our French language skills, ensure our kit list is completed and begin preliminary work on the themes we want to capture. That last part is important because, although we don't want to land on the ground with too many preconceptions, we do want to build up content around some general themes. This gives us some direction instead of the "waiting for it to fall on us" approach to the creative process.

With that said, I'd like to hear what themes are important to you. Soldiers, ex soldiers and the general public alike. Everybody has established some mental images of how they view the conflict and how they view the soldiers. I'd like to hear about some of those themes so please post below.

Dinners and French

Re-learning French is lot of work. My trip to Afghanistan will have me embedded with the Royal 22e Regiment (Vandoo) and being able to parle français is important to our ability to document the story effectively. Shaun has a better grip on the language than myself but I'm determined to improve my own skills before we hit the ground. This past week Shaun and myself were interviewed by Alexandra Guité from CBC. She was very thorough and I'm looking forward to seeing the interview. Its airing on French CBC next week and I'll post it when its up.



This past weekend Shaun and myself also attended the annual Paschendaele Dinner at the Sgt/WO mess at the Royal Westminster Regiment. It was my pleasure to present a painting to the Mess of WO Curtis Beglaw. I've tried Curtis' patience over the years by creating painting on many of our friends and unfortunately, until this painting, none of them included him. Hopefully this sets the record straight. Curtis has always been very supportive of my crazy projects and remains one of my closest friends.

Posted below is a time lapse video of the painting process.

A Soldier's Christmas Song

I've created this time-lapse video of the 'Road Move - Small' painting I did a few months back. I've added some music from Xander Rawlins '1000 Miles Apart' which can be purchased on iTunes here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/1000-miles-apart-single/id401905022

Merry Christmas

Thank you KickStarter and Goodbye Cpl Pennock

Our project to raise funds via KickStarter came to a close last night and I'm very happy to say we've raised almost $5k! Our project still requires some additional funding but we're well on our way to reaching the overall goal of $9k.

KickStarter has been a great experience and I highly recommend it for anybody wanting to fund an artistic endeavor. I will note however that it was not KickStarter that raised the money: it was networking. Of all the funds that have come in, 90% was via my Facebook network. These are friend, family and former soldiers who I've kept in contact with on FB. KickStarter therefore is a great tool for centralizing the raising of funds but ultimately, its your own network of friends and colleagues who backs you. This seems to be true in all things in life.

As I continue to work on this project that network shrank this week. Cpl. Jeff Pennock of the Royal Westminster Regiment passed away on Dec 20, 2010. Jeff had been battling with cancer for the last couple years and yesterday he stood down. I have very fond memories of Jeff as the clerk in the Battalion Orderly Room at the regiment. A more dedicated soldier would be hard to name. In an infantry unit such as ours, there is a lot of emphasis put on strength, aggression and violence of action. Its a fighting regiment so this makes sense. Jeff was quiet, gentle and kind and our regiment would have ground to a halt without his effort. Jeff was guy who kept everybody's paperwork moving and had the thankless job of managing the admin for the regiment. Jeff was also a father and a husband. Our loss at the regiment is meager in comparison to grief felt by his family.

~CBH

Making Progress

Its great to see progress in a project. Sometimes that progress comes in the way of milestones and other times via material support. The last week the Royal City Record ran a story about my Painting to Afghanistan project here. I really have to thank Andrew Fleming from the Record for taking the time and interest in my project. It was great to get some publicity and it really created some new opportunities for raising funds for the project.

I also have to recognize everybody who has made a contribution on my KickStarter account. Here again, my friends and colleagues have outdone themselves. This project is not funded by big business, government or even really by any one organization. Almost all the financial backing has come from current or ex-military. I can't begin to tell you how humbling it is to have a young MCpl donate $500 to this project. Well, maybe I guess it is understandable: this project is about documenting their legacy, their effort and sacrifice. They are the ones that will hopefully benefit from this project so I guess its fitting that they take ownership of it as backers. This way they can say this really is their project.

There is more press coverage coming and more announcements about the project over the next couple weeks. The holiday season is also fast approaching which means I'll soon have more time to finish the current large piece. For now, I'm going to post a small painting I did for a very supportive sister. Nothing to do with the project, but right now I need all the practice (and support) I can get.

Painting to Afghanistan

I've just launched a fundraising program through KickStarter. If you're not familar with KickStarter, its a service set up for artists to raise money for their projects. Its funded some really great ideas and I'm using it to raise money to complete my project on the Reserves at war.

As you can tell from my previous posts, I rely heavily on friends who come back home from overseas duty and share with me their stories and photos. This is the content I use to create my paintings and without it I'm really at a loss. As much as I've been able to use some of these to get me started, what I really need is first hand experience in country: I need to capture (via film) the subjects and create enough material to then finish my painting series. The money raised by KickStarter will be used to transport me to Afghanistan, secure equipment and the documentation gear needed to fulfill the project.

The really great (and viral) part about KickStarter is that it encourages the artist to share their art with the people who back them. I'm doing the same. No matter what you donate, you get something from the show. Smaller donations receive really cool luggage stickers based on one of my finished pieces and larger ones receive original art right up to the largest 22"x44" fined paintings (1 of 10).



Please back me if you can, and if not, please post this share this link on your own sites: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hennebery/painting-to-afghanistan

Here is a quick video explaining the project

Road Move... small

Part of the process of developing a large piece has to start with rough sketches and preliminary paintings. Some of these 'preliminary' works can be really quick sketches and some turn into 10 hour paintings. "Road Move" was suppose to be the former, but turned into the latter.



This painting covers Andrew Richards again (sorry, he's the one to give me most of my photo content from Afghanistan. Note to my friends, send me some photos and I'll hopefully find something I can use?) The painting will be turned into a large 42"x22" painting on board but for now, the one above is a modest 4"x6". After completing this, I'm excited (and more confident) about doing the larger piece.

I'll also be announcing something on Wed this week about the project and how its going to progress. I'll require a great deal of help from friends (and friends of friends) to see this project through to its conclusions. Thanks for the support.