Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day! In developing a pen and ink portrayal of Sacagawea, one famous mother, I created a lot of “good try’s” (those images that didn’t make the grade).

First off, I was working from my imagination, because there are no photos of Sacagawea. There is a painting of her with Lewis and Clark, but it seemed like that artist might have been working from his imagination, as well.

So, I looked up her tribe, the Northern Shoshone, a.k.a. the Snake tribe, and found photos of the women and children of her tribe. I got a sense of their facial features, how they wore their hair, and how they carried their babies.

Because, and this part really surprised me when I discovered it, Sacagawea led Lewis and Clark across America with her infant son in her arms (and on her back).

How is that not the headline of every mention of this expedition?! She had her 55-day old baby with her on this trip that would cover 5,000 miles (8,000 km) and last 16 months.

For this portrait, I was working without a pencil under-sketch. I wanted to capture the spontaneity of the line and the flow and puddle properties unique to pen and ink. And to do that, I had to work directly with the ink to the paper. But with ink, there’s no erasing. So, after many good try’s, I ended up with two that I liked, for different reasons.

You can compare them below. What do you think?

You can see other pen and ink work here.

And you can see other portraits here.