Tony Hough Discovered

Scene Narrative:

This large painting was created during 1990, in gouache and inks and depicts a character concept for an Adepta Sororitas (female space marine) named Sister Sledgehammer. This Sister had previously featured in one of the ink illustrations Tony had produced for Games Workshop Books in 1989 telling the story of Hyams, an Inquisitor's visit to Holy Terra - she was an incidental character in a crowd in an interplanetary zoo illustration.

The Space marine armour is exquisite. It is predominantly silver with gold edging; this has a reflective iridescent sheen like finish. It is incredibly well detailed with Imperium iconography of the Rogue Trader era. There are extra layers of detail in the gloves and belt buckle which appear to be intricate engravings. The face mask and head peace again are again incredibly detailed as well as the face and penetrating eyes. The Sister appears to be armed with what can be best described as shoulder slung Copper/Brass Melta gun and carrying a similar finished bolter pistol as side arm.

The middle and backgrounds are dominated by titans. These super heavy war machines, especially the one in silhouette, are almost certainly Warlord Titan Night Gaunts. These titans have been a consistent theme in Tony’s early 40k pencil work. The Titan in the foreground is armed with an extremely detailed plasma canon, you can almost take it apart, whilst Imperial Guard or technicians can be seen scaling the titan’s leg. The colours of purples, greens and silver are vivid and work well in combination to enhance the scene. The colours were a popular palette range amongst the first stable of Games Workshop artists

History and Provenance:

A hereto unknown large colour painting by Tony Hough retained in his personal possession for over 30 years

Early Games Workshop concept artwork

Artwork was created by Tony to show on a visit to John Blanche at the Design Studio. Tony felt he'd been "typecast" as a Black-and-White illustrator and wanted to break out of that mould. Although John encouraged him to finish the piece it was eventually declined due to the prevalent demand for more action orientated imagery as opposed to static scene-setting work

Very early concept artwork of a new sample female space marine chapter and character

Tony Hough’s Titans

An obscure rarity! Only a handful of people have seen it outside the GW Studio...