The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

The official blog for Osprey Publishing, a publisher of military history books, has started creating a series of posts in advent calendar style to showcase artwork from their books.

As with conventional advent calendars, each day’s post from Dec 1 to Dec 24 will contain a door graphic which you can click to reveal an artwork illustrated by one of Osprey’s many talented artists. While there isn’t much in common between military historical art and the spirit of love, care and sharing associated with Christmas, I’m always glad to collect any high quality military art that comes my way. By the way, each post also helpfully lists the book that the artwork was commissioned for those interested to collect the actual printed artwork (which is the ideal choice of course, except that Osprey books are not exactly cheap here. The shipping charges from their online store don’t help either (unless they offer free shipping to Asia ).

I apologize beforehand for not showing any of the illustrations from the below posts despite this being a Art Friday post since part of the fun comes from not knowing what to expect when clicking the door graphic (unless you have the corresponding book of course )

The first artwork comes from the late great Angus McBride (1931-2007), featuring Attila the Hun’s cavalry charging a wall of shields (and spears) of Roman General Flavius Aetius’s Visigoth allies in the Battle of Campus Mauriacus (451 AD). Angus McBride previously did a fantastically detailed illustration of Vikings so his artwork is bound to impress.

© Angus McBride / Osprey Publishing

I especially like the color plate of three soldiers from the White Armies of the Russian Civil War era illustrated by Andrei Karachtchouk for 3rd December. I remember reading about the power struggle between the Whites and Reds during the Russian Civil War (1918-1922) for my GCE ‘O’ World History classes but I had no idea of how soldiers of that era looked like until this post.

If you’re a pirate enthusiast, you’ll probably know that the infamous Blackbeard’s flag looked nothing like the the traditional “Skull & Crossbones” Jolly Roger commonly associated with pirates. Catch a glimpse of Blackbeard’s flag in the December 4th post.

Dec 6th’s post contains David Parker’s illustration of an interesting wartime photo staged by a German Kriegsberichter (war reporter) during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Below is a diorama inspired by the same photo by Swedish modeller Christer Johansson @ Armorama. You can probably guess the photo I’m referring to by now if you have read any book on the Battle of the Bulge

© Christer Johansson

Visit Osprey Publishing Blog for all the “Advent” Calendar posts or click on these links for this week’s posts. (Dec 1, Dec 2, Dec 3, Dec 4, Dec 5, Dec 6)

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
DIA Military Art Collections
Osprey Duel Series
Kyoshi Harada’s Illustration of Erich Hartmann’s Bf 109G-6
Dick Kramer’s FN Herstal Artworks