Sketches from the frontline

Fresh, raw, and unedited. Well, unless you count the necessary cropping and slight contrast adjustments, all done in the name of increased visibility. Surely such actions can be suffered!

I’m halfway through my Army-mandated driving course, which so far has involved more sleeping and mulling over the vagaries of life rather than actual driving, which its name would otherwise imply. Yes, I may not have had previous real-life driving experience, but after my early days in Daytona USA, and more recently, spending time with the likes of GRID and GTA IV, you’d think I’d have learned something about how to skillfully maneuver a 25-tonne tracked vehicle around a hairpin at 320 km/h.

Actually, the maximum speed of a ATTC APC (which is what I’m driving) is 50 km/h. Which, assuming you didn’t ram into a wall first, would probably cause the engine to overheat anyway if you managed to achieve that sort of speed.

But enough of that: the course was, to my surprise, a stay-out course, which basically means that we get to go back home every day, quod erat demonstrandum. Yes, I have not made a single post throughout the week, but hey! It’s not as if the last vestiges of my non-existant talents have been stripped away or something.

I present two sketches made a while back, when I first got my hands on some micron inking pens. They’re pretty random, but then again, I guess that’s what happens when you dump someone in a desolate wasteland populated only by juveniles, brutes and a whole lot of armoured vehicles. Today’s post image just happens to be one of them.

The other was something I was fooling around with, trying to come up with ideas on how to revitalize a certain outlet for my creativity. You may actually see these appearing in some form or other once I actually get around to working in Illustrator and stop playing TF2 and my PS3 with reckless abandon.

Another sketch I made yesterday for fun, just to see how much of my vehicle I could recall in-between my bouts of extended napping and moping over how Soul Calibur IV would still be a few weeks away.

Also, if you were wondering, no, the actual driving test hasn’t arrived yet. That’s tomorrow. So far, though, I’ve managed to drive over 24 kilometres without crashing (although there was that one time my hand got stuck on the signal indicator switch and I almost oversteered into a tree), so that should be a good sign.

I always keep forgetting to sound the horn before starting my engine, though. I mean, what the fuck? Why on earth would anyone even do that? It defies all logic, both tactically speaking and practically speaking. If I wanted people to know I was moving off, I think the sound of an engine coughing is warning enough. It’s one of the many things that nag away at my conscience whenever I wear my utilities, that scream why the fuck are you supporting such stupid practices with each button on my uniform that I fasten.

Also, no, drifiting with an ATTC would probably just result in a turtling-over and a one-way ticket to the detention barracks for dangerous driving. It’s a tempting thought, though: your gunner firing his 7.62 FN MAG while you rage through a hairpin, kicking up a cloud of dust to cover your approach, tracks screeching bloody murder through every beautiful moment of it.

I’ll be back with more details about the course soon, though I’m actually waiting for our floatation driving to be over before I write about it, for obvious reasons. I mean, come on, we’re going fucking swimming.

Entries: Of belts and gis — Sketches from the jungle

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