Captain Jack Sparrow Portrait (with Special Curse Effect)!

Thanks for checking out my Father's Day Gift Instructable! So my father has been asking me for years to paint him a portrait of Captain Jack Sparrow... I decided I would paint him one for a special gift this year and even added a special surprise effect to it! Please VOTE for me for this contest!!!! I would love to do the projects in the prize books with my own kids!! Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!

First I purchased a 16" x 20 " canvas and treated it with a coat of gesso. I sanded it smooth and treated it one more time and sanded it again. I then looked through many different reference photos of Johnny Depp as the Captain and ended up combining a few different ones to get the visual I wanted. I grabbed my pencil and drew out my base sketch for the portrait.

After tightening up and finishing the base sketch I mixed the paint (Acrylic)...a flesh base tone for Jack's face. I used brown, white, yellow, red and a touch of blue until I arrived at my desired hue. I then laid an even coat down wherever skin area was to appear. After that I went in and dry brushed some (brown) shading along the cheekbones and anywhere where shadow would appear. (Dry brush is when you dip your brush in the paint and wipe all of the wet paint onto a paper towel . What's left inside the bristles is used to create the shadow by rubbing the minute amount of paint in the brush softly onto the surface giving it that soft fuzzy appearance your looking for.). I then laid in some highlights along the nose, and around the eyes and mouth. Again for this I used the dry brush technique with white paint and some lightened up flesh tone paint. I finished this step of with some black paint, laying in the base for his eyebrows, eyes, nostrils and facial hair. I used both the dry brush technique and regular painting technique for this. I also dry brushed some shadow along the nose and around the eyes with the black paint.

I worked a little more adding some more highlights to the face. Brightening them up and pulling them out more. I also went in with a little more dry brushed brown to deepen some of the shadows and push the back a bit.

Next I continued with the black paint and started laying in the base for the Captain's hair. At this point I started painting in Jack's accoutrements beginning with his bandana. I used crimson red lightened up with some white, working from dark to light...left to right to apply depth and follow the light source cast on his face. I used some regular crimson for some shadow and dry brushed it across to create the gradation from dark to light. I then finished the bandana off with some design line painted in grey. A little of the grey was also dry brushed across the bandana to dirty it up a bit. The same process was used on the rest of the bandana in the lower left if the portrait. I then went to work on some other detail accessories such as his earrings and beads. The earrings along a couple of his beads are painted with nothing more than some dry brushed black and gray. The other beads were painted with some red paint darkened up by a little black. I also started working on the detail of his dreads.

I went back in with a little more dry brush to soften some edges a bit and create a little extra depth. I used greys, black, brown and some crimson.

Back in with the black paint to start working in the rest of the hair... I continued on with the black paint using it on Jack's coat as well. Out comes the dry brush again to work in the dreads some more with some highlights.

Next I began laying down some black paint for the base of his hat. I then began dry brushing some gray onto the hat for highlights. I then added some white highlights to the front of the hat keeping the same light source even throughout the portrait. The hair was worked on some more at this point to the Captains left with some brown and some dry bushed highlights to provide the soft look and texture of his dreads.

My next step was to paint in the background, I chose a deep dark purple. I wanted a moody color to match the atmosphere of the painting and its "special" effect. I dry brushed some lighter purple and white to create a misty foreboding background. I also worked on some detail of Jack's accessories such as his larger earring.

At this stage I went back to the old scalawags wardrobe...painting in the shirt a royal blue with dry brushed highlights and shadow. I also added grey dry brush to the white undershirt and to his jacket. The belt buckle was painted in shades of grey and dry brush to simulate tarnished silver. The rest of the beads and hair tie were painted And more dry brush to the dreads and hat were also applied to finish off the depth of the piece.

Now that the portrait of Captain Jack is complete it's time to add a little something to set this portrait of Jack apart from all the rest... A little blue UV reactive paint! I painted Jack's cursed state from the first movie which only appears in the moonlight. I painted in his skeletal face and accessories that I wanted to appear in the "moonlight" (black light) with the UV reactive paint. The great thing about this paint is that it goes on milky white and dries totally clear so that during the day the portrait of Jack looks his normal self and at night under the "moonlight" his curse is revealed!

My Dad receiving his gift...(slightly earlier than Father's Day) He loved it and couldn't get over how cool he thought it looked until I revealed to him Captain Jack Sparrow's dreaded curse under the "moonlight".... Needless to say his reaction of how much he loved it more than doubled! He finally received the painting he had been wanting me to do and had no idea i was painting him one... Very fulfilling... Love you Dad.