Pencil art honors soldiers

Al Smith spends hours each day sketching photographic images. His tools: pencils and erasers.
“I’ve done close to 200 drawings the past three years,” said Smith. “If I wasn’t married, I’d spend all day drawing.”
His passion for pencil art was awakened several years ago when a friend who is a Vietnam War veteran asked Smith to create a sketch of him using the famous photograph “Grace (Old Man Praying)” as the backdrop. The ensuing sketch was the first one Smith had created since high school.
“As a kid, I drew everything … cars, trucks, hot rods, cartoon characters, etc.,” said Smith, adding that the piece he did for his friend resurrected his love for pencil drawings.
“I started drawing with a passion and fervor,” said Smith. “I couldn’t stop drawing.”
With his friend’s sketch behind him, Smith began drawing other soldiers who had served during the Vietnam War -- recreating actual photographs using graphite and erasers.
He has since packaged those penciled portraits into a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation titled “The Vietnam Experience.” He’s used the presentation to show his art and telling groups in the area about the lives in the faces of war.
Smith said his presentations have afforded him the opportunity to express his respect and appreciation of soldiers in the military.
“I don’t draw anything violent,” said Smith. “I just want to show the boys next door. They aren’t special people but they are because they’re soldiers.”
Smith’s collection also includes “War Heroes,” “Women of War,”  and “WWII – Iconic.”
While creating each of those collections, Smith said he was challenged by something in each piece  -- the eyes of a soldier, a terrycloth towel worn beneath a helmet, inanimate objects and overall scenes. “Drawing a submarine (floating on the waves of the ocean) really stretched me,” he said.
One pencil drawing really stopped him – transferring the image from a picture taken of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945.
Smith said he’d figured out the sizes he needed to capture the image of the three men, but every time he’d start to sketch Churchill “something wasn’t right.”
Then it dawned on him. He’d left out a key component to his working ritual.
“I never start drawing unless I pray first,” said Smith. “I ask God to combine my mind, my eyes, my hands and my heart (to allow me) to transfer the image I see unto the blank piece of paper.”
When he realized he hadn’t prayed before starting on the Yalta drawing, he said, he said a prayer and his creative returned.
Smith recently began to shift the focus of his pencil art. He said he’s doing more animals sketches these days than military drawings. He’s thrown a wide net over the animal kingdom, sketching both domestic and wild animals – both big and small.