Awakening the Bear Artist Perspective

When I was first contacted by Uwe Eickert of Academy Games to do his cover art for the first in the Conflict of Heroes series entitled --Awakening the Bear--I was thinking about how to create an atmosphere that depicted the time and place in a strong way...this would need go beyond soldiers, tanks and planes. I wanted to create something that screamed Russian front; and the best screamer I knew was the Germans and Soviets battling it out in the frozen winter of Russia. In fact, whenever someone mentioned the Russian front when I was young, I always envisaged battles in the freezing snow, lots of snow! I also wanted to show something else that I thought might typify that war....so I settled on hoards of Russians in waves of attacks with Germans defending with casualties on both sides. Thats how the present scenario played out in my mind that ended up as the cover art for Awakening the Bear. Called 'The snow trench'..the German platoon finds itself assaulted by a sizable formation of Russians directly after taking out a T-34 tank-- early model. The painting promises a brisk fight with German machine guns gearing up for business.

I worked in close collaboration with Uwe on this cover art --- would paint this and that on the canvas, and then we would consult and eventually agree on what we wanted. In fact all the covers I did for this series was done in this way. For me its been a very happy association with Uwe Eickert and Academy Games and hope our efforts will bare fruit.

Stephen Paschal - Stephen Paschal's Art Studio
www.stephenpaschal.com

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