Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Pirate Paintings for National Geographic

Gregory Manchess


Sometimes, after waiting for the right assignment for many years, it finally shows up, at exactly the wrong time.



I’d just finished a job that I swore I wouldn’t repeat: 10 paintings in 5 weeks. Long days of nothing but painting, eating, and sleeping. I hit the deadline and said, ‘never again.’ Two hours after laying down the brush, I got an email from National Geographic asking if I’d like to do a series of pirate paintings.

C’mon...nobody passes up doing pirate paintings. Not even if it’s 10 murals and they only have 8 weeks, including research, sketches, and finals. Do they?



I said, “Yes, definitely.”



This is the first in a series of large oil paintings, digitally enlarged as background images for an exhibition of artifacts from the first confirmed pirate ship ever excavated from the ocean floor, “Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah From Slave Ship to Pirate Ship.”

NGS needed a series of four portraits of some of the actual crew members. I started with a thumbnail of three of the main figures, just getting a feel for the project, followed by a more serious study of two of them. I worked from a silicon model head that would be used in the actual exhibition.









There was barely enough time to think on this project. I kept realistic images in my head of what I wanted to paint, and followed those mental images like a paint-by-number process. Here’s the step-by-step sequence of creating a portrait of the lead pirate, Capt. Black Sam Bellamy. I'll follow soon with more portraits and several massive scenes with multiple figures.



























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