So I ran my online class out of my classroom again. Intermittent power outages so I had to be where the internet was available. I was drawing with my students again. I had already done some sketches like this one a month or two before.

Now I was working on paper and I haven’t been doing that because I want to stay portable with my tablet. That being said if you haven’t had the chance to work on paper or physical media…it’s expensive, but it’s worth it to help with decision making. The computer doesn’t have limitations…so you have to define the sandbox you’re going to play in.

I enjoyed this sketch but I didn’t think it was doling what I wanted…and I want to push it farther. So I went into procreate and redrew using the paint sketch as an under drawing…

I knew the position was wrong. So I kept resizing and adding and tweaking things until I had a whole figure.

Maybe I thought it was getting too close to one piece, but with normal human proportions. Just not enough, so then I threw the kitchen sink at it. And what I got from that felt like things I was doing 9 or 10 years ago.

I had changed the body position to be more forward leaning more aggressive. And I kept trying to incorporate the canon fuses Teach was known to wear into battle to scare the piss out of the people he was robbing. That’s the thing about Blackbeard, he didn’t kill a ton of people.

After that I tried to pull back and simplify. Maybe getting close to things I tend to do with printmaking. Maybe it was out of frustration, but I wanted to add the theatricality back. I knew I didn’t want a tricorn hat, it’s not really a thing to wear on a boat with heavy winds. Anyways I loosened up and started doodling.

This is where I landed before I added the skulls. I remembered Blackbeard’s flag with the devil and the heart on it. So I think that’s where the Wagnerian opera horned helmet came in. And I’m not sure if the hands are me just cartooning or if I would thing he would wear to again scare the ship he was boarding into thinking they were being attacked by a demon or devil. The pants are linen…the sharp teeth are probably wooden. Again scare tactics. I like this much better than where I started. Peace, Nic

PS Reading books about Pirate history also helped. Pirate Enlightenment or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber is a great read or listen if you do Audible like me. Doing research is good. Keep drawing kids.