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polymathscriptorium [2015-12-12 12:59:54 +0000 UTC]

I’ve wanted to do an artwork series on mental health for some time. Over the past months I’ve been thinking of ways to create stories within a Historical Military setting. This one, ‘The Episode’, is the first of a series of six, and focusses on the manic and depressive episodes of a Napoleonic French Artilleryman.

Military History and Mental Health are both topics close to my heart. I paint Miniatures for a living, and I myself suffer from mental health issues. I drew on my experiences of both to come up with the story and artwork. I’ve also painted a set of 28mm figures to go alongside the artwork, and to tie the two together nicely.

The Artilleryman doesn’t actually suffer from any realistic condition, as the feelings and depressive/manic episodes are too close together and too dramatic for real life. Realistically, the changes would be over weeks and months, not moments. However, it makes for a better short story! The character starts of depressive, suffering from depression and perhaps anxiety. This then changes and flips in battle into a mania episode, much like a bipolar disorder change. The mania leads to confused thinking, over-excitedness, over energy and poor decision making. I’ve always been drawn to the idea that warfare and battle is ‘Humanity stripped down’ showing the best and worst of us. I’ve also always been interested in how mental health issues fit into warfare; both in creating problems and how it could mask/expose the issues of those who had them previous.

I draw a lot of inspiration from Traditional Historical Artwork, as well as Miniature painting and a long love of graphic novels and comic books. I wanted to create a loose and changing feel to the artwork, and so went for a less structured ‘frame by frame’ layout. Over the coming series I’ll be trying out other formats and techniques, all fitting with the chosen mental health difficulty.

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