An introduction
In an effort to be a little more active online and to grow my audience on different platforms, I’m starting a new blog here.
Firstly, a bit about myself; I’m a Belgian digital artist with a passion for history. I’ve been creative all my life, and since a very young age I have been sure that I would be doing this for the rest of my life! Recognizing my potential, my parents sent me to the art academy at the age of 6 years old. For 12 years, I learned from the great masters who came before me, specializing in digital art for the last 2 years of my studies – which was when I found my calling.
I have been interested in (and surrounded myself with) history since I was old enough to understand it. I immediately fell in love with the medieval knights and Napoleonic soldiers of old. Fortunately, my parents also recognized this and took me to as many museums and re-enactment (living history) events as possible from a very young age. This further enhanced my passion and truly sparked my interest in history, with my school friends even calling me, ‘The pirate’, or ‘the knight’. Most children of my age were more interested in playing with cars and action heroes, while I was building literal armies of historical Playmobil knights and soldiers in the living room, recreating famous battles such as the battle of the Golden Spurs, the Normandy landings and Waterloo.
Since I was introduced to living history at such a young age, it was only a matter of time before I signed up to get involved myself. And yes, I immediately fell in love, replacing my toy soldiers with uniforms, arms and armour!
I also started (sabre) fencing when I was 8, and have continued with the sport, eventually also sparking my interest in Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA.
In my historical illustrations, I always try to stay as faithful as possible to the source material, scouring the internet, libraries or consulting with experts to find accurate contemporary sources. This has become very important to me, as I feel that portrayals of history in gaming and television have now become too much watered down with fantasy. And it has become my purpose to make true history, as it actually was, popular again!
But being surrounded with history all my life didn’t mean I was ignorant of fantasy or science-fiction. I got my first taste of these with films such as Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars”, and these had a strong influence on my current interest in fantasy and sci-fi stories. My main opinion on these was always that they should be realistic and based on real world history, such as the medieval period. “The Lord of the Rings” for example, did a great job at this. While creating fantasy artwork, I always try to stay very grounded and realistic, so that a fantasy soldier wears practical armour, for example. But I’m getting off topic. I’m sure I’ll touch upon this again in a future blog post. ;)
I could go on for a very long time, but I’m sure you’ve now got a glimpse of where I come from.
Thank you for reading, and I’m sure you’ll hear of me again in my next blog post!
Kind regards,
Simon Bauwelinck
