I was interested in doing a very tonal background, with the suggestion of a city, as you often see in early paintings or prints. If this were for a book, I'd have taken the time to do the research on a city in India which da Gama might have visited, and shown that city as the background. Here, I just suggested the buildings.
I also remembered that da Gama was Portuguese, not Spanish, so the motto on his sash now reads: Proteger a carne branca (see the previous post for more on this).
As with the last piece I did for this blog, this original painting of Vasco da Pollo was auctioned on eBay.
Here are some process images for this piece:
1) roughing in color washes in acrylic over the sketch on paper. In this case, I printed out a copy of the sketch, glued it onto Strathmore 500 Series board, and painted directly on the printout.
2) More tones coming in.
5) Finally, work on rendering Vasco da Pollo.