Irena Zaric

The character I illustrated is based on a book called “Pretty Birds” by Scott Simon. Her named is Irena Zaric. Set during the siege of Sarajevo, Irena and her family are brutalized and chased out of her home by Serb Para-military. In order for her to survive she steals from the dead to buy food, dodges bullets in her own home, risk her life to contact her best friend. Under the tutelage of rogues and heroes, Irena becomes a sniper.

According to the book, her uniform consist, from head to toe: Irena covers her head with a dark ski mask, paints her surrounding eyes with shoe polish to cover her exposed flesh. She wears a shemagh, Arab headdress (not mentioned in the book). I thought it would be a nice design element. Adorned in a mechanic's coverall as her basic uniform. Black gloves, again to hide most of her exposed flesh, except for her trigger finger, nail painted in purple (favorite color.). Wears a simple military belt, to carry extra ammo and food. Also fitted with Russian inspired combat boots. Irena's rifle of choice is the American made M-14, used during the Vietnam war, and still in use today. Chambers a 7.62mm round, kept nicely packed in a 20 round magazine. She also tapes up metal parts that can rattle and make noise, especial her rifle sling, in order to maintain noise discipline.

I painted her using a couple of software packages using Photoshop and Painter. And of course the illustration started off as a drawing. And then scanned to Photoshop.