Edmonds, Washington (CNN) -- For Michael Reagan, the portraits always start the same way. 

"I do the eyes first so I get this connection with the face," he said. "I am pretty exhausted after a picture. Just try staring at a photograph for five hours without any distractions." 

Reagan, a professional artist for 40 years, is known for his vivid etchings of politicians, celebrities and athletes. 

Today, he has a new subject: fallen members of the military. 

It all started three years ago when the wife of a Navy corpsman who was killed in Iraq asked Reagan to draw her late husband. 

Reagan insisted on doing the portrait for free. Then he had a realization. 

"I looked at my wife and told her what happened and said, 'Now we need to do them all,' " Reagan remembered. 

"Doing them all" meant closing his art gallery and reaching out to the families of fallen service members. 

Most of the troops Reagan draws are U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has recently started drawing portraits for family members of British and Canadian troops killed in those conflicts. 

Many families were unsure why someone would offer to do a portrait for them at no cost. They wanted to know why someone would volunteer to, as Reagan puts it, "participate in the worst time of their life." 

Slowly, word among military families spread and requests for portraits began pouring in. Reagan, a Vietnam veteran, grew to know the faces of hundreds of troops lost to war. 
Who first asked Reagan to draw her late husband?
the wife of a Navy corpsman who was killed in Iraq asked Reagan to draw her late husband. 
