Art Inspiration: Imagine The Impossible: Steampunk Man 01 (The Captain)
March 20, 2018 Leave a comment
‘The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.’ Aristotle
‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Albert Einstein
Inspiration and Imagination, something every artist needs and is elusive as an island of tranquility in a sea of chaos. Many people have told me that I inspire the children and people in general with what I do. Whether creating art, playing baseball or trying to improve my life, people say that I have inspired others to try new things and look inside themselves. I have always found this interesting because I get my inspiration from these very people.
A prime example is when I drew the staff at my school as cartoon characters or caricatures for their Christmas Cards. It took quit a while to create the caricatures but once the staff received them they loved the cards and caricatures. In the next few weeks I will be posting a few of the characters from the cards because these people inspired me to create these characters. Hopefully they can spur imagination and inspire others.
Steampunk Man 01 (The Captain)
The last caricature of “Imagine the Impossible” is, me. After creating all the staff caricatures I also had to create mine. Yet I had already created one and I could not improve on what I had already created. I had created it as character in a story I had started about a year earlier, “The Captain and the Baroness”.
This is a story I created for someone special as a birthday present, but I decided to continue the story line. I was going through some difficult issues at the time and indulging in my creative side helped me through it. The story was loosely reflecting the issues in my own life and when I wrote chapter three I was going through a lot of changes in my life. Therefore I decided to change the look of the ‘The Captain’ character in the story. The original character was my caricature of myself dressed as a pirate, aka Jack Sparrow. So I changed the look of the character and my new caricature was created.
I began by basing his outfit with that of a naval officer during the Victorian Era. He is a captain after all so it made sense. I drew him with grey pants and vest, a royal blue jacket overcoat with gold trim and a white pouf shirt. I added a royal blue Ascot tie and black riding boots. This caricature is in the Steampunk style; therefore I drew two holsters with side arms. I added a small dagger to his right and a sabre on the left with a couple of belts. If you look closely, the sabre guard has an inverted engraved image on it, a falcon. I am Maltese and adding a falcon created the idea that my caricature is the Maltese Falcon. The last touch on the outfit was a pocket watch hanging from his belt. It makes sense; a captain needs a watch to help navigate. The hair, beard and mustache (Van Dyke), were very similar to my hair beard and mustache I had grown at the time. The only thing I added from the previous images of ‘The Captain’ is the out stretched arm with the caricature holding a falcon. Along the same lines as the idea of my caricature being the Maltese Falcon.
The staff did not see this caricature until the final group portrait and they all loved it. Yet I did tell them that I did create this caricature as a character in a story I wrote. If you want to see and read the chapters I posted you can click on the link below.
“The Captain and the Baroness”
In the next few weeks I will post the final group portraits with all the caricatures in it. I hope you too will enjoy the nineteenth and final Steampunk caricature from “Imagine the Impossible.”
Steampunk Man – a.k.a. The Captain
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