Having once made eye contact with the captain, the fear filled moment—however brief—became a fixed image in the young cabin boy’s mind. 

After four nights in a row of watching the four released Pirates of the Caribbean movies with the family, I of course had to do a pirate themed project…and I wanted to practice illustrating a face. I can't help but brag that this is the first time I've illustrated a face beyond a rough sketch. Generally, I have always avoided faces limiting them to an angled back facing profile. I'm really happy with how this turned out, though much of the credit I feel must go to the use of this photo. I am amazed at how the expression can be changed so drastically with minor adjustments. It's fun to see what started out as a friendly mountaineer suddenly become a hardened pirate!    

I'm really enjoying this new painterly method—I'm able to work much faster and the style has it's own unique flow. I'm finally starting to break my habit of always needing to add detail! I actually have some variation in detail bringing focus to specific areas rather than creating a mess of evenly sprinkled detail. This is so important and I'm going to keep challenging myself with this.