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Q is for Queen

Here is one of my favorites from P is for Pirate, the notorious Grace O’Malley—Irish queen & pirate captain. She was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I and reportedly had an interview with Gloriana (who, after all, had a soft spot for buccaneers).

Queen Grace has been the subject of songs, at least one play and even a musical. So far as I know the swashbuckling Maureen O’Hara never played her in a movie, but what perfect casting that would have been!

I show Queen Grace in an Errol Flynn pose with her ruffians behind her. In the sketch I thoughtlessly drew a baroque-looking ship like we’re used to seeing from piracy’s golden age. In the final painting I used the Mayflower—much closer in style to a ship from Queen Grace’s time—as reference. Same deal with the costumes: they’re Elizabethan. I first drew her in men’s clothes but thought she looks much cuter in a dress.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My friend Vince Dorse, the über-talented artist who colorized Two Bad Pilgrims, spills the secrets of his technique here.

Here’s hoping you enjoy a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends.

The Mayflower

Another spread from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This is the big splashy first glimpse of the Mayflower.

Here is the thumbnail sketch:

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Everything’s there that needs to be, but I was concerned that the direction of the drawing didn’t show the Billingtons being rowed toward the Mayflower in the background.

In the tight sketch, I turned the foreground boat around so we’re looking at its stern as it rows away from us. I had to scan this in two pieces—sorry.

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When I drew the tight sketch, I worked half-size, so it was fairly easy to freehand the lines of the ship.  When I inked the scene, I worked at 125%, which is pretty big.  I don’t have enough control with a brush to competently ink in those lines at the larger size.  I wound up ruling them with a rapidograph, and used a homemade french curve—I traced the ship’s line onto a piece of watercolor board and cut along the line with a razor blade.  It gave me a nice smooth template to rule the lines with.

Here’s the inked and colorized image:

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Colorization by Vince Dorse.  Click on the picture to embiggen.

Update—Vince has some more on the colorization process over here.

Five not-too-bad cover ideas

People do judge a book by its cover.  Or at least, it’s the cover that gets people to pick up the book in the bookstore and see whether they like it.  Here are rough cover ideas for Two Bad Pilgrims.

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Art Director Jim Hoover liked Idea A  I did tight sketches of the boys, the New Worlde mappe and the title type, which Jim put together as a comp.

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The boys and the map are painted as a single image.  One last request: show the boys having burst through the map.  The compass rose is a separate piece of art.  The type I inked in as separate black & white art.  Jim Hoover combined these elements into one cover image and added the credits at the bottom.

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Master of the Mayflower

Here’s my costume color indication for Master Jones for Two Bad Pilgrims.  ‘Master’ was what they called the ship’s captain back in the 1600s. I couldn’t find a contemporary picture of him, like an engraving—so I made him up.  I tried to give him a salty swashbuckling air with the plumed hat, sash and of course, earring.

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Plymouth Plantation

It’s November—time to start thinking about Thanksgiving and pilgrims!  Here’s another scene from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This one shows the pilgrims beginning construction of Plymouth Plantation.  The first thing they built was the common house/fort.  This is my thumbnail sketch, 2 inches tall.

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One of the great things about being an illustrator is that you’re always learning something.  F’rinstance, to draw this scene of 17th century building construction, I had to find out how those buildings were framed; how a block and tackle works; how an ox yoke is harnessed.  I made several trips to the library and spent some time on the internet.

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I show the pilgrims hauling cannon to the upper storey of the fort.  p22newyoke

Art director Jim Hoover and editor Kendra Levin had a team of crack historians fact-checking my sketches.  Turns out the pilgrims didn’t bring any oxen with them on the Mayflower, so I replaced the ox with a group of men when I inked in the drawing.  Too bad; I kind of liked the ox.  The timbers are shaped to form mortise and tenon joints.  That’s an adz lying in the foreground.  p24.lojpg

Color indication—

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—and colorized final art.

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Colorization by Mr Vince Dorse.

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Two Bad Pilgrims’ progress

Here’s the big scene from Two Bad Pilgrims, where Francis and Johnny nearly scuttle the Mayflower when they fool around with their father’s fowling piece.  First the thumbnail sketch:

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Then the tight sketch:

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There was some squeamishness about showing two boys firing a gun in a kids’ book, so we tried a different approach.  Sometimes you encounter this kind of snag in the creative process.  Kendra Levin, the editor and Jim Hoover, the art director worked with me to find a solution.  How about if instead of the gun, we show the boys playing with squibs?

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What the heck is a squib?  Here’s where my dad, and the Company of Military Historians really came to the rescue.  My dad posted the question in the forum page of the Company’s website.  Turns out a squib is a thin tube of paper or a hollow quill filled with black gunpowder—homemade fireworks.  When you light one it zips around the room.

But, this isn’t really what happened aboard the Mayflower.  More important, it’s not as interesting to look at.  We ultimately struck a compromise and decided to show the boys with the gun, but not actually firing it.

Here’s the inked in version.  Squibs, a barrel of gunpowder, straw ticking on the bunk, old wooden planking—all the ingredients for setting a ship afire.

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It seems nuts to have gunpowder just laying around like that, but according to Mourt that’s the way it was.  I know that British warships in Nelson’s time stored all gunpowder in a special room, the magazine.  It was lit by a lamp on the other side of a glass window.  Anyone in the magazine had to wear slippers, because the nail of a shoe grating across powder on the floor would cause a spark, blowing up the ship.

Here’s the color sketch.

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And Vince Dorse’s colorization.

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John & Elinor Billington

Here are some more character designs from Two Bad PilgrimsJohn & Elinor Billington were Francis & Johnny’s mom and dad.  The passengers on the Mayflower comprised 2 groups: the Saints and the Strangers.  The Saints were the Puritans who wanted to found a colony where they could practice a Christianity free from the corruption of their religion in Europe.

The Strangers weren’t necessarily religious, but came to the New World for a variety of reasons.  The Billingtons were among the Strangers, and their reason for the voyage was to escape debt.  John Billington was certainly no saint—he was a bully who constantly antagonized Miles Standish to the point that Standish took legal action against him.  Eventually, John Billington met his end by making history: he was the first man in the New World to be hanged for murder.

I’ve drawn John & Elinor shabby-genteel, a couple who once had money but have fallen on hard times.

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