Picture of Bryan and me: delayed

It has been a long while since I have painted anything that attempted to be remotely photo realist in more than 3 colors. Being a bit of a nit picker who likes to pick nits, I usually hold a very fixed idea when I begin a project. The exception to this rule would be my collage panels, since that is a jigsaw with no concrete answer, and i don't know I am done until I glue down something, look at the collage as a whole, and am satisfied with the result. I digress. I will have a very specific vision of what I would like my finished product to look like, and there is little room for error or variance.
Back in 2009, I had a brief and serendipitous encounter with one Bryan Anderson, Army Staff Sergeant, Retired. He was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq, and his story was followed by many media outlets. He received a Purple heart for his injuries, and became a pseudo celebrity in the sense that he is one of the triple amputees who survived his injuries overseas. His story also helped me be at peace with the distinct possibility that if I were injured when I was in Iraq, and came home with a fraction of my physical self, that would be fine, as long as I came home. That is a rather dark and grim thought, firmly grounded in reality, and ultimately a pragmatic and crucial conclusion to come to when the alternative which you have to confront is death. In helping me accept this, Bryan Anderson was by example a hero. I had the opportunity to shake his hand, and his girlfriend was kind enough to snap a photograph of me with him. I have kept this photograph in my laptop and backed up on several different USB Drives, and external hard drives. After some time and wanting to increase my production output, I decided I wanted to make a painting of this photograph. I attempted to pencil in our figures on the canvas prior to painting, however I became increasingly frustrated at subtle variances in what I had drawn and what the digital image was. I would erase, and paint over the failed attempts several times before I resorted to a technique which I use with my students. My printer having bit the dust after many years of loyal service, I headed to a retail print shop and had a transparency of the photo created. I would use the overhead projector at school to project the image onto the canvas. This idea was foiled with the bulb in the classroom's projector being out. As such, I must wait until the bulb is replaced before I can proceed with this particular project.