Alongside the Mapping Suprematism project, I’ve been working on some other watercolour paintings.

Three of the most recent have had a military theme whether it be naval, army or siege based.

The below painting, “Ships at Battle”, was based on the 1939 painting, ‘Men o’ War passing on the open sea’ by artist, Michael Zeno Diemer. I was inspired by my first attempt a few years back to create an atmospheric naval combat scene but, this time, I used an image reference to help define the ship shapes.

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I decided to produce the next two images below with no image reference. For the top painting, “Hold the Line”, I did an initial rough sketch of the layout, although this was changed quite dramatically as the piece was produced.

“Hold the Line” didn’t initially go according to plan. My intention was to have a much more abstract and wishy-washy effect across the entire painting. However, after making a mistake with the French soldiers it forced me to go much more detailed and define individual soldiers. I think it actually worked out well in the end!

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“Incoming” depicts a siege on a burning castle. Initially, the castle was going to be more central and focal to the painting, but then, not knowing what to do with the rest of the space, I decided it should be to one side. I added the water as a natural defence and an access bridge. I find water quite hard to paint, especially with reflections so it provided some welcome practice. The final addition was to add in the missile (the reason for the castle being on fire) with sparks falling from it to the bridge below.

If you would like to see more artwork you can check out my Instagram page.