Battle above the cliffs

Models used: Revell Hawker Hurricane Mk. I, Airfix Messerschmitt bf109e | Free/premium assets utilised from Vecteezy.
Software used: Adobe Photoshop

about this artwork

A Hawker Hurricane pilot of No. 85 Sqn. P2923 pulls the flight stick to gain altitude during a fierce battle above the iconic British cliffs. German fighters try to outmanoeuvre the British defenders, while one of the German planes has been hit, engulfed in a ball of fire it crashes in the sea. The pilots have jumped out just in the nick of time. The crew of the civilian ship cheer the brave defenders on, hoping that the skies of Britain will remain theirs.

The process of making my artwork pieces consists of different steps. I start out with gathering images and assets. Next is visualising the composition in my head, sometimes I sketch the idea on a piece of paper. After this I place the main subject, in this case the Hawker Hurricane, on the Photoshop artboard. With a tool I ‘cut out’ the plane from the white background.

Now comes the fun part, matching the scene with the main subject, a process where you need to look at the general lighting, highlights and shadows in correlation with the light source. I do all of this with so called ‘adjustment layers’. The flaps were transformed to give the impression of them being moved to complete the manouvre.

The detail stage is where I use different kinds of brushes to add flak fire, smoke, clouds. Extra elements, such as the German and British fighter planes, parachuting pilots and civlian ship come from my own collection or the premium Vecteezy library.

Compared to my other artwork pieces I kept a clean realistic style, instead of the brushy oil painting finish.

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