#Christopher Rothero

[petermorwood]

Hmm.

Christopher Rothero wrote and illustrated books for Osprey Publishing.

Richard Scollins (1946-1992) also illustrated books for Osprey Publishing.

In addition, Rothero and Scollins illustrated articles for "Military Modelling" magazine, which I used to get for the many years when making and painting models was A Thing. :->

*****

Scollins did the pics for one about the Norse and Norman invasions of 1066, and I used to have that issue until it and all the rest went the way of old magazines during a house move.

However, I have a pretty good visual memory, and a couple of images online (seen as usual, while looking for something else :-> ) sent me searching for other images from that long-ago magazine article in August 1978 (see top left of the busy page).

Chris Rothero's book "The Scottish and Irish Wars 1250-1400" was published in July 1984, so there's no question which pics came first.

Both illustrators did work for the same magazine and same book publisher. Maybe they worked in the same studio. Maybe there was a deadline looming. Maybe they were friends.

And maybe Rothero just wasn't at ease with action poses, because a typical costume study looks like this:

After just a few - and there are lots more like these - his style becomes easy to recognise, as is the way he represents cloth, metal and faces.

That's why those images I saw on-line prompted a different memory...

...and why I did a little cut-and-paste exercise with the magazine art to confirm it.

I like to think, before doing his repaint version, that Chris Rothero asked Rick Scollins if it was okay, and Scollins thought of friends and deadlines and said "yeah, go for it."