Well, here’s two view of my art of famous pirate William Newgate.
So, in brief, I tried to replicate more or less the engravings illustrating the real-life General History of the Pyrates, which is probably the most obvious choice for a real-world source more or less contemporary with the Golden Age of Piracy.
Now, for what it’s worth, I don’t think I quite did the engraving-as-shading quite right. On closer inspection of the actual illustrations, the engraving/crosshatching/whatever isn’t supposed to indicate shading, it’s basically meant to be a stand-in as basically any kind of colour or texture, since the engraving themselves are monochrome.
Colour printing for engravings did exist since at least the late 1700s, but I’m not quite sure how to replicate the process digitially, so I just coloured it in with various paint brushes.
Also, I don’t know if the way I shaded the image makes logical sense — especially considering that, like I said, in the original images, it just represents any kind of colouration — but I definitely see the benefit of adding shading to an image.
Incidentally, that William Newgate’s treasure is buried on Oake Island is a reference to the fact that real-life famous pirate William Kidd is reputed to have buried his treasure on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
Protip: he didn’t.
I bring this up, because — a touch morbid though it may be — Newgate Prison is where William Kidd was imprisoned before his execution.
So, yeah…
As always, follow me here:
Sign-up for my email newsletter here.
Realmgard 