I created this drawing in graphite pencils. The emotions in this drawing are a reflection of feelings that families face during a time of deployment. Five years ago, our family faced such a deployment. Jake was almost two years old, Alex was a Captain in the Air Force and it was only our second year living a military lifestyle. During that half a year, as our friends and family know, I was pregnant with our twins while starting to notice signs in Jake, of what we later learned, was autism. I title this drawing Departures (and not Deployment), because this one big event of the deployment was not only a physical departure (for Alex), but also simultaneous departures, or beginnings, in our lives. These beginnings took us in different directions, that ultimately condensed into a single focus of family and togetherness.
Here is the progression of the stages of Departures:
The completed drawing:
