Illustrations for Peter the Pirate

I recently ran across some old illustrations I did for my Peter the Pirate stories.  I drew them quite a while before I went off to the UAE. and they've been stored in a manilla envelope for nearly 5 years.  I took them and scanned them and then using those scans, I put backgound color to them on the powerpoint program so then had some color and mood to them. 

 

This is is from one of the Christmas stories called "Chirstmas Island" 
I never finished the illustration and I haven't put the story on the blog just yet

 

This is Peter talking to his dead mother in the underworld called "Dreamland"
Peter was taken from her when he was a boy by the British Navey.  Up until that time
she had been an American loyalist, but this practice of essentially kidnapping
young men to serve on the King's ship under inhuman conditions is one of many points
of contention that led to the eventual revolution.



This is the Botanist.  He was  naturalist and empiricist. 
He is another shade that Peter meets in the underworld.  The Botanist
lives on an Island of his own creation, but refuses to believe he is
dead, choosing to still live according to the rules of his empiricist
belief.  Peter has tremendous love and respect for him all the same.



The Little Wooden Fool
Was a peace offering from the man who ruined Peter's life.  He was a cruel, petty
Captain uner whom Peter Served.  His cruel ways led to a mutany.  His life was spared and
the mutany was bloodless due to Peter's intervention, but mutany is mutany, and there
was no other option, even for honerable men, than to take up the life of piracy.



Careem, a Maldive prince who became Peter's closest friend and spiritual twin.



Most of these illustrations are from the--well--epic adventure called, "the Commodore's Journey"  If you can imagine a ballad going on for about a hundred pages and is still unfinished that's how long it is.   As for the look of the illustrations, I was hoping that they would have a sort of woodcut look to them--at least that was what I was going for.  The idea being that this story takes place sometime between 1750 to about the time of the American Revolution so a woodcut seemed appropriate.  If I could make them look more like scrimshaw, I would--that would be far more appropriate.





The Tower Black
This is deep down in the caves below the iceshelves of the antarctic.  It is the setting
for the climax of the Commodore's Journey







Sammy Kirkendol, a ghost, and former member of Peter's crew.  In this picture he is doing his best to help
Peter in his promise to find a certain spirit in Cold Black Bay in the antarctic.  Sammy warns him
of Edmund Black and his many traps.