Sketching soldiers from Iraq to Ukraine

When illustrator Richard Johnson went to the Ukraine with the Canadian military in 2015, he declined the VIP accommodations, asking instead to bunk with the soldiers.“I like to get close to the grunts,” said the artist-journalist in an interview, “so I ended up in this huge, creaky, damp dorm building in what was a Soviet military base. The bunks were three high and we were jammed into this space. It was damp and gray and miserable and rainy. It really felt very Soviet.”J