I went to an exhibition at the House of Illustration on the weekend which featured drawings by E.H. Shepherd during the war. Most notable was that these drawings were done on the front lines from life.
Some of the illustrations still managed to retain some of Shepherd's light-hearted cartoony tone which I think made his images about war particularly special.
The image above was my favourite drawing of the exhibition as I feel that, even though the colours are really muddy, it captures the atmosphere of trench warfare really well.
It was also really interesting how he was used to go ahead and draw the landscape and approximate the distances, which he would mark on his drawings with a ruler for the troops to determine better where to fire artillery fire.
I want to apply some of the skills I saw in his work as a draughtsman to what I produce specifically for my entry to the Folio Society War Horse competition. His figures are incredibly gestural and show a lot of emotion. Perhaps I should also try and be more light-hearted in my tone in order to make my images less predictable.
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