Progress Pic: ANZAC 2017

Here's a sketch that I did at the Taranaki dawn service on ANZAC Day in New Plymouth. For those that aren't from down under, this is a very early morning Remembrance Day. (ANZAC stands for Australia & New Zealand Army Corps.) So it's very dark but there are also bright spotlights. It's hard to see the dark bits while blinded by bright lights. Still, I found a good view that didn't have a spotlight facing me, but still had enough light to see my page. I also had to keep in mind that when the people get there they might be casting a shadow on my book. In the end, I just started and hoped for the best!
At that time, most of the people weren't there yet. I started to draw the monument, trees and black foreground tree shapes. I keep doing that until the people show up and settle in the place that they will be. I have about 20 minutes the draw as much people as possible. By the time that's over, the suns coming up and everything looks quite a bit different. What you see here is about an hour of drawing. The people in the foreground will have very dark shadows, with highlights around the edges of each on, due to the spotlights. It's mostly like you see but darker. The monument the the mid ground people will also be darker, remembering that the main light is coming from the right. The trees could also barely be seen so I'll build up quite a bit of ink. Although they are white as you see now, they will blend into the sky. This seemed like something I could do later so I left it at the time.
That was about a week ago now and I've been chipping away at it a little at a time. I always think that I am taking notes, as in I draw enough of each part so that I remember what each part looked like. My next post will be the finished one and you can see how it turned out.