Together towards Victory

Track for the piece: [link]

This piece, which I consider my best to date, needs a rather lengthy preface, if you can read through it.

I, naturally, love everything memorial-related. Possibly, due to my military background, the only things that can make me sentimental is stuff related to wartime comradery, heroism and stuff revolving around it, because I now it and the price of it.

That being said, one of my all-time favorite military sculptures in the Iwo Jima mermorial in Arlington, US, even though I don't rank the American's army performance in WW2 overall to be something glorious. But the memorial is damn fucking good, so when I was listening to FGFC820's "Legion", I got this picture of the memorial in my head and it went on from there.

But since I didn't just want to redraw the memorial, I decided to sort of combine it with my fave fandom and theme. There was also a great pic of another crossover, between the Star Wars universe and another US memorial which name I can't remember - you know, the one where Darth Vader stands near a granite slab with the names of the fallen written on it and sees the reflections of the Death Star personell in it.

But, I decided to make it not memorial-esque but more like spur of the moment image-catch. I looked up for a fitting photo, found it, and reffed from it, factually overpainting over it.

Another concern was that you know, I have the reputation of a person doing rather unorthodox Warhammer fanart in the sense that I root for the "losers" and glorifying Chaos, but I didn't ever draw actually anything truely uplifting for the faction.

I thought about it, and realised, that there's not a SINGLE piece of fanart showing Chaos - or any Renegade militia faction - acting as a cohesive, bound-together unit, achieving some kind of glory. Which is kind of dumb, because ANY military has it. I thought that the Iwo Jima memorial was fitting, because the Americans were fighting a desperate war against the Japanese all in all, because they were on the enemy's turf, and that sort of reflects Chaos in a sense, because they are the once fighting over a much mightier foe.

The theme of "no step back", fighting against all odds is what always drew me to be explored in art, and that's actually why I always chose Chaos over every other faction.

So I decided to draw just that - Blood Pact being victorious, gritty and display that they are a solid military force with bonds amongst soldiers. Something no-one ever did in fanart or official art, and something that I'll probably get flak for from the "hardcore fans" who can't have anything but fucking zombie cultist hoards in their Chaos.

I put a lot of myself and for a change, emotion into this work, experimented with photoshop brushes to achieve a more rugged look to the work, and I'm absolutely thrilled with the result. This is the kind of art I always wanted to make and it makes me happy to achieve the vision. I'm also glad that I can explore more positive scenarious in my artwork now.

So, I hope you enjoy it as well, and thoughtful comments and critique are as welcome as always. Hope me using the memorial as base for the painting doesnt offend any veterans too.

UPDATE: fixed minor issues, some reflects, Blind's hand and most importantly left-top cultist expression, added goggles.