Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about how accurate history-themed art should be. The main thing here is that it depends on the context. If you’re making illustrations for an educational history book, then you need to do your research and be as accurate as possible. Because it’s an educational book that people will take seriously and learn from. Likewise, if you’re making a “serious” comic set in the past, then you’ll probably want everything to be as accurate as possible.
But if, as I often do, the historical settings are more for the sake of atmosphere or nostalgia or because at least half of your influences are older stuff, then precise historical accuracy is a bit less of a concern. If you’ve seen enough old movies, photos etc… from the time period, then you probably have at least a vague sense of what it looked like and – if you’re getting a mood across – then this is what matters the most. Not only that, history isn’t always as “neat” as you might expect. Older things can carry over later than you expect.
Case in point, here’s a full-size preview of a digitally-edited painting that I made an hour or two before preparing the article in early May. This semi-digital painting is part of a series which was inspired by a hyper-realistic daydream I had – three or four days earlier – about a snowy British town in 1996.
(Click for larger image) This digitally-edited painting should “officially” be posted here in mid-October next year.
Yes, technically, I do actually have memories of Britain in 1996. I was about seven or eight years old at the time though. One random memory from that year was being upset that I wasn’t “old enough” to go to the cinema to watch “Independence Day” with my Dad, one of my uncles and my cousins (for reference, the “12A” rating wouldn’t be introduced until 2002). Yes, my opposition to patronising British film censorship goes back a long way. Still, I was only a child back then and my memories of 1996 aren’t as hyper-detailed as – for example – my memories of last year.
So, yes, I used a lot of imagination and artistic licence when making this painting. The rural settings are fairly timeless – I almost certainly saw places like them in 1996, but they were based more on memories from the late 2010s. Disposable cameras existed in 1996, but my memories of using them are from the late 1990s and early-mid 2000s. The purple hat is a reference to an old 2010s webcomic of mine. The baggy anorak in the painting was inspired by photos of 1980s and early 1990s anoraks that I saw online during the mid-late 2010s. But this brings me on to my main point about history not being “neat”.
Yes, the trendiest people in 1996 would probably consider this 1980s-style anorak to be “old” or “outdated” or whatever. But, leaving aside how the art series is set in a rural town rather than a city, it’s entirely possible that someone might have bought one during the 1980s and just kept it because it was still useful. I mean, I’m writing this article on a second-hand computer which was made in about 2012-13. The song I’m listening to whilst I write this article – “Stone Cold Summer” by South Arcade – was released last year. And I’m listening to it in MP3 format, a format which has existed since the 1990s.
The two main programs I used to edit the scanned painting aren’t exactly the latest modern ones either. As well as a free/open-source program called GIMP 2.10.30 which was released in late 2021, I also used an old version of MS Paint from the 2000s (version 5.1, if anyone is curious) for small corrections. For the actual scanning and some basic cropping/resizing, I also used a program from 1999 called “Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6” that was from an early 2000s magazine cover disc – and it still works on Windows 10 🙂
This article was prepared on an old Windows XP-era version of WordPad that I carried over from an old computer. Why am I using all of this old stuff? It’s cheap, it works, it’s what I’m used to using and these are all honest “offline” programs that don’t have “subscriptions” or “A.I. features” or any of that rubbish.
Anyway, the point of this article is that – unless you’re making something educational or are aiming for “perfect historical accuracy” – it’s ok to be a bit more vague or imprecise. If you’re just trying to get a mood or an atmosphere across to your audience, then use artistic licence! And also remember that, in any given time period, at least some people will be using and/or wearing “older” stuff for practical reasons.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
