Battle of the Ironclads

The Battle of the Ironclads

Gouache, ink, & digital colors

My submission for a Steampunk themed group show at Studio ZaPow in Asheville. I was going for an old-fashioned steamboat look, and in my research I stumbled across images of the civil war-era ironclad vessels. I remember being fascinated by these in history class growing up, so I updated the old ships while keeping some the elements grounded in the past.

I give my friend Garrett most of the credit for this piece. I was about ready to just pass on contributing to the group show for lack of ideas when he passed along “space dandies” as a starting point. I also borrowed from his long list of fictional names to come up with the personalities of the ship captains.

The ships and captain portraits are pen drawings with gouache paint. For the background, I soaked a paper in water and lightly manipulated a few drops of India ink and added color on Photoshop. The water and ink interacted in a very natural way that I couldn’t quite achieve with water colors.

Preview: Battle of the Ironclads

Winford Greatspeed, the captain of the space-faring steam ship CSS Merrimack.

This project is proving to be quite difficult, especially getting a realistic 3D perspective on the steamships. Damn ellipses!!

Preview: The Battle of the Ironclads

Here's a small corner of my current drawing project. I'm working on completing a piece for ZaPow's Steampunk Carnival opening next month.

This is Captain Brigham Carbide of the U.S.S. Monitor, an ironclad steamship that can navigate space. The full illustration will show two spaceships inspired by civil war era steam boats in a battle just outside of Jupiter's orbit. Both captains' portraits will be in the lower corners of the illustration, with a brief narration of the events in the middle. I'll post the opposing captain of the C.S.S. Merrimack later in the week.