2016’s first publication featuring my work came out on the 1st of Jan in the BBC’s monthly history magazine. Their commissions are always right up my street as I am a big fan of history, so if I can get paid to illustrate it, well then that makes me very happy indeed! Here’s a look at my last two images commissioned by BBC History starting with Decembers issue.
This image from the December publication is depicting the capture of Richard III by forces loyal to the House of York in the Battle of Wakefield. There were a couple of things I had to bare in mind when putting this one together, firstly I wasn’t allowed to show any gore secondly no battlefield scenes! So to get around this I decided to symbolise the capture of Richard as a bold white rose, the sigil of his house.
Another tricky element was that the image had to be historically accurate, so as you can see above a number of pieces of armour and weapons had to be changed. Most of my research came from googling battle reenactments, so it seems they had the wrong armour on!
My most recent image was illustrating the fall of Granada at the hands of Queen Isabella. I focused specifically on the beautiful buildings that make up the Alhambra with the unfortunate former inhabitants in the foreground fleeing. Apparently Christopher Columbus witnessed the house banner of Isabella being raised over the city, so originally the man in the bottom right was Columbus. I used the iconic image of the cross that Columbus used when he crossed the atlantic to discover the new world. However, it was rightly removed as he only used it on his sails not on capes like I had originally done, as well as the fact it was another 20 years or so until it was designed. In the end it was decided we would just make the figure a Spanish man from the time.
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