Queens of the Sea #5: Blue Gown and White Cloak for Grace O’Malley

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Welcome to day five of the Queens of the Sea series, part of the Random Magic Pirates book tour! Here is the mini-bio for today’s pirate, provided again by Lyrika:

Grace O’Malley: The Rebel Chieftain

Grace O’Malley, or Gráinne Ní Mháille in Gaelic, was a de facto Irish clan chieftain and pirate. She challenged English merchant ships and interrupted trading routes, which brought her to the attention of reigning monarch Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth sent a military commander to deal with the trouble, and he reportedly killed Grace’s oldest son, turned her second son against her and imprisoned her youngest son. Grace wrote to request an audience with Elizabeth, and was granted one. They agreed on a truce, but the truce was brief.

The meeting is notable for its unusual nature, as it included a negotiation of terms between two of the 16th century’s most unusual and powerful women — one a queen of royal blood, and the other a
pirate queen of her own making.

You can read more about Grace O’Malley at Miss Page-Turner’s City Of Books on May 18th, as part of the Queens of the Sea series. (I’ll update the link after it’s been posted.)

I really wanted to try to draw something she could have worn for her meeting with Queen Elizabeth, but I can’t really make heads or tails of how that picture works — how about that cape’s neckline? In the end, I based the general design on a statue of Grace O’Malley that I thought was very beautiful.

Don’t forget to enter my contests! Click here for the chance to win an original drawing, for those of you who can give me an address if you win, and click here for the chance to design a pirate outfit, open to everyone!

Check out the tour schedule here! And for more information about Random Magic, here’s the trailer for the book.

Also, check out the Rum + Plunder treasure hunt for more pirate prizes!

I’m amused by the poll results so far…


Queens of the Sea #4: Jacket and Pants for Anne Bonny

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Welcome to day four of the Queens of the Sea series, part of the Random Magic Pirates book tour! Here is the mini-bio for today’s pirate, provided again by Lyrika:

Anne Bonny: The Southern Spitfire

The illegitimate daughter of an Irish lawyer, who left Ireland for the colony of South Carolina (at the time, there was no United States of America, the settlements were all colonies of the British Empire) and became a merchant.

She married a small-time pirate but ran away with Jack ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham after they met on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, a pirate lair of the time.

A comrade of pirate Mary Read, Anne Bonny was captured along with Mary Read and Jack Rackham in a pirate hunter raid but mysteriously vanished from historical records after being imprisoned, although Mary died in jail and Jack was executed.

You can read more about Anne Bonny at The Epic Rat on May 17th, as part of the Queens of the Sea series. (I’ll update the link after it’s been posted.)

Now, with Anne Bonny, one of the most famous female pirates, the outfits are getting a little more traditionally pirate-looking… You will have to imagine her carrying pistols, though, that’s far out of my area of expertise! This whole series is a little out of my area of expertise, really — I’ve drawn more pants this month than I probably did all last year — but I’m enjoying it, and I hope you are too!

Don’t forget to enter my contests! They’re open until the end of the tour. Click here for the chance to win an original drawing, for those of you who can give me an address if you win, and click here for the chance to design a pirate outfit, open to everyone!

Check out the tour schedule here! And for more information about Random Magic, here’s the trailer for the book.

Also, check out the Rum + Plunder treasure hunt for more pirate prizes!

Hm, let’s have a poll, I haven’t done one for a while… How about a nice long one?


Queens of the Sea #2: Lai Choi San’s White Satin Robe

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Welcome to day two of the Queens of the Sea series, part of the Random Magic Pirates book tour! Here is the mini-bio for today’s pirate, provided again by Lyrika:

Lai Choi San
The Queen of Macau Pirates
(or)
The Jade Empress
(or)
The Enigmatic Empress

Lai Choi San was a 20th century Chinese pirate, who prowled the South
China Sea during the 1920s and into the 1930s.

She commanded a fleet of a dozen junks based in the South China
Sea. Finnish adventurer and freelance writer Aleko E. Lilius managed to find a way to
work among her crews, and he recounts his impression of the
cool-headed commander this way:

‘What a woman she was! Rather slender and short, her hair jet black,
with jade pins gleaming in the knot at the neck, her earrings and
bracelets of the same precious apple-green stone.

She was exquisitely dressed in a white satin robe fastened with green
jade buttons, and green silk slippers. She wore a few plain gold rings
on her left hand; her right hand was unadorned. Her face and dark eyes
were intelligent…and rather hard. She was probably not yet forty.

Every move she made and every word she spoke told plainly that she
expected to be obeyed, and as I had occasion to learn later, she was
obeyed.’
(I Sailed with Chinese Pirates (1931), Aleko E. Lilius

Lai Cho San was also the inspiration for a 1930s comic strip,
Terry and the Pirates, featuring a
cold-blooded villainess, The Dragon Lady. The series, by artist Milton
Caniff
, sparked a radio series (1937-1948) and a later TV series
in the early 1950s.

You can read more about Lai Choi San at In the Library of LadyViolet, as part of the Queens of the Sea series.

It was kind of Lilius to describe her outfit so well, wasn’t it? That made today’s overall design very easy to come up with, meaning that I could spend less time thinking about it and more time admiring pictures of 1920s-era vintage Chinese robes. I could have sworn that the word “necklaces” appeared in that description at some point, though. Oh well. I’m sure she had a least a couple of necklaces!

Imagine trying to keep a white satin outfit like that clean anywhere near a ship… Even if it’s not what she might have worn on duty, so to speak, it can’t have been easy. I imagine that’s one perk of what was no doubt a generally rough existence — she could task some poor underling with the duty of keeping her clothes immaculate. Although, given that she may have never existed at all, I suppose a fantasy character could keep all manner of delicate white clothing perfectly clean.

Don’t forget to enter my contests! Click here for the chance to win an original drawing, for those of you who can give me an address if you win, and click here for the chance to design a pirate outfit, open to everyone!

I wanted to clarify one thing about the first contest – it’s open to international visitors as well as domestic ones. And yes, all you have to do is post a comment to enter — although it is a little boring for me to watch the comments roll in, next time I do something like this, I will make people write something more imaginative! But I won’t change the rules on you mid-stream, this time.

Don’t forget: check out the tour schedule here! And for more information about Random Magic, here’s the trailer for the book.

Also, check out the Rum + Plunder treasure hunt for more pirate prizes!


Introduction to the Random Magic Pirates Book Tour and Queens of the Sea #1: 1300s Outfit for Jeanne de Clisson

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So for the rest month, I’m doing something a little different… A while ago, I was asked to join in an online “book tour” highlighting the book Random Magic that would be centered around a pirate theme. The idea is that multiple blogs would all do something interesting and pirate-related as part of the tour, and although I’ve never done something like this before, it sounded like it would be fun to try. Check out the organizer’s blog to see the schedule and get an idea for the kinds of events that will be taking place!

Each day’s outfit is going to be based around a pirate (nine historical pirates and one character from Random Magic); I don’t intend to give much more than a passing nod towards any sort of historical accuracy, so although most of these women were real historical figures, the outfits are going to be a little on the fantastic side — more like costumes.

Today’s pirate is Jeanne de Clisson, who lived from 1300–1359 and was an active pirate between 1343 to 1356. Here is a mini-biography about her, written by Lyrika:

The Avenging Angel

One of the most bloodthirsty female pirates in history. Jeanne de
Clisson, nicknamed the Lioness of Brittany, was driven to piracy by a
desire for revenge, after her partner was executed.

She sold off all that remained of her estate to raise enough money to
buy three warships, had all three ships painted black, and the sails
dyed blood red. Her Black Fleet was the terror of the English Channel (an arm of the Atlantic Ocean), but one
personal proviso was enough to save hundreds of seafarers.

The proviso was this: The Lioness held the French king accountable for
the death of her beloved Olivier, so she spared the ships and crews of
other nations she met on her way — she only attacked French ships.

You can read a more in-depth biography about her at the blog Fluidity of Time, as part of the “Pirate Queens” series!

I had fun thinking about what she might wear, as this is a good couple of hundred years before the age most connected with pirates in the popular imagination. Women’s clothes in the early 14th century were rather pretty, I found, but rather less than practical for life at sea, or for personally beheading captured aristocrats. She apparently didn’t disguise herself as a man the way some other women pirates did, but I like to think she went with men’s clothes anyway, so today’s outfit is loosely based on men’s clothes from the first half of the 14th century.

I’ll be changing my regular schedule a bit during the tour: I’ll be posting a new drawing on the 12th and 14th, a drawing each day from the 16th to the 20th, and two final drawings on the 23rd and 24th. There will be a poll to determine everyone’s favorite pirate outfit that will be open on the 26th and the 27th, and on the 28th I’ll draw an extra outfit for the winning pirate and also announce the two winners of the contests I’ll be holding during the tour.

That’s right, two contests! For one, the prize is the original drawing of any one of the ten pirate outfits, and since that one requires an address, it’s open to anyone who is able to provide me their address if they win. Because I know I have a lot of readers who can’t give out their address online, I’m running a second contest that’s open to everyone, where the winner gets to design a pirate outfit! Click here for more information about the first contest; click here for more information about the second contest.

Welcome to anyone who’s joining us for the tour, and for my regular readers, I hope you enjoy it too! I personally am looking forward to a lot of buckles being swashed — and maybe little parrots perching on shoulders of dramatic coats…

Don’t forget: check out the tour schedule here! And for more information about Random Magic, here’s the trailer for the book.

Also, check out the Rum + Plunder treasure hunt for more pirate prizes! (I like the look of that pirate puppet, myself…) Speaking of that contest…