richard johnson

Richard Johnson tells us what it's like to be sketching in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Field artist and visual journalist Richard Johnson has put up a wonderful piece of visual journalism at Washington Post on the patients at Children’s National Medical Center. It's powerful and moving. His sketches really captures the mood in a way photographs cannot.

From his own words:

As I sketched this scene of the young family saying goodbye to their dying baby I felt enormous pressure to capture the moment for them. It was an incredibly sad time and I remember quite clearly having to force myself to concentrate on the drawing and not on the emotions of the moment. The internal battle was waged throughout the sketch. Afterwards I closed my sketchbook feeling that my slavishness for detail had drowned out the very emotion I had sought to capture. I felt like I had failed. A few days later though I looked at it again. I realized that my slavishness had captured the moment after all, and then I cried for them. Ballpoint. Probably 40 minutes. Hardest drawing I have ever done.