A few words about the living hope and calm courage of the crew of the submarine

A few words about the living hope and calm courage of the crew of a submarine" is the title of this work. There is no mention of the K-141 Kursk and Lieutenant Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov, although it is to them - the ship and the young officer who left the note - that I owe the choice of the plot.
But the fact is that in the process of working, I faced a number of difficulties. It was extremely difficult to solve the issue of the portrait similarity of the characters in the painting. It turned out to be impossible - I didnt have the talent to take a typical photograph of a person (as everyone was photographed at that time - in full face with a flash) and draw a head from it from a different angle... I got so confused that it just hurts my eyes to review everything that I was able to do now!
I had to make collective images of sailors - I invited suitable guys and asked them to pose. In some cases, he took pictures with his phone, holding it at arms length (for the right angle), and then drew from the photo.
So I moved away from the documentary, named authenticity in the depiction of the main characters.
It was not possible to obtain an image of the 9th compartment (historical place of action) of the cruiser 949 of the project.
Either I was looking for and asking the wrong place, or, given that the ships of this project are actively serving, no one was in a hurry to share secret information ... in general, I painted the interior of the compartment conditionally. Based on my own understanding of the internal structure of the submarine, cables and power shields are everywhere on the walls in countless numbers…
And the thought came that it would be right to dedicate the picture not to a specific tragedy, but to all Soviet and Russian sailors. People who love to live, know how to serve, and if they are completely at the edge, they have to die - they leave courageously…