When I was just out of University I was very kindly given permission by the family of a WW1 veteran to illustrate his war diaries and turn them into a graphic novel. However, after months of research and preliminary sketches I decided to put the project on hold as I, rightly, didn't feel as though my skill level with a pen was good enough to accurately and compassionately illustrate the veterans experiences. Over the last decade I have always wanted to focus my work on history and WW1 inparticular but I've never had the time or ideas to do so. With work being so quiet this year and having the concept for a new series of drawings finalised I feel now is the perfect time.
I am going to illustrate the First World War from the Battle of Mons in 1914 to the Battle of Amiens and the Hundred Days Offensive in 1918. I will tell the story through the use of maps, landscape drawings, first hand accounts, typography and iconography to produce A4 posters for each major battle. I am an illustrator not a historian so this is not about uncovering new facts on the First World War. It is about presenting facts in a new an interesting way. I have already finished my first poster design on the Battle of Mons which you can see below.
I will be sharing some of this project through my website and social media channels. I have set up a new Twitter account for the project which you can find here. Most of the project will be run through a new Patreon. I have never used Patreon before but seen as the project is going to take around 3 years I cannot rely solely on print sales to fund it. So I am offering full acsess to the project including polls on which battles I should illustrate, behind the scenes photos of my studio and monthly PDF's of my finished illustrations. I will also be running exclusive Patreon only giveaways to win one of my original drawings each month that take around a 100 hours to produce.
This is a passion project for me, but it is also a project I hope can ignite a fire within people that I have, which means the sacrifices of a generation of people are never forgotten.
If you would like to support this new project please visit here.
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