MANTI — It started in April 2003 with artist Kaziah Hancock's offer to paint portraits of fallen U.S. soldiers — free, for the soldiers' families.

In the more than three years since the United States invaded Iraq, more than 2,590 soldiers have died.

"My job is to celebrate who they are," Hancock said about her portraits.

Four other artists — two from Utah, one from California and one from Florida — have joined Hancock's nonprofit Project Compassion, which has completed nearly 270 portraits. Photographs of about 90 fallen soldiers await the artists' interpretations.

The photos become paintings valued at up to $10,000 each that the artists give away to relatives of soldiers who have died in present and past wars. Examples of their work can be seen at www.heropaintings.com.

The Department of Defense now includes a Project Compassion flier in a packet of materials military officials give to family members of soldiers who die in Iraq.

The soldiers come from California, Vermont, North Dakota, Texas and nearly every state in between. They're pictured holding weapons, women or children.

Wyoming's Pfc. Nicholas Blodgett is Hancock's 173rd oil-on-canvas portrait of a soldier.

In the photograph, Blodgett is holding a machine gun in one hand and a cigar in the other. The family asked that Hancock include the cigar in her portrait — it's part of who he was.

Like an actor getting into character, Hancock recently went into the bathroom inside her rustic home set on a 15-acre ranchette and lit up a stogie. The act of lighting up becomes part of her protracted answer to what she deems a somewhat silly question, "How long does each painting take?"

The short answer is Hancock doesn't punch a clock.

On the day she was ready to put Blodgett's image on an 18-by-24-inch canvas, she turned on some upbeat music and paused to talk while she painted.

"If I can nail the personality, that's all I'm after," she said.

Hancock does a kind of dance as she paints, backing up 15 feet or so to a bed behind her, looking at the canvas and then approaching her palette, maybe for a little yellow ochre or transparent orange iron oxide.

She repeats the process over and over as Blodgett's face and uniform emerge in a mix of color, value, temperature and hue.

"It's so beautiful as he comes to life," she said. "It's coming all together — yes."

Her method of painting looks physically demanding, maybe tiring. Emotionally, each portrait is an investment.

What about burnout?