Original Art Sundays No. 142: oddments: bison and pirates

Still writing like a fiend and a mile behind on grading. I have a total of 26 entries left to complete for the long-overdue Comics Through Time project, and am trying to give it priority without harming my teaching career in the process.
Always a juggling act, this academia.
Also inching along on the next page. One of these days I'll get frustrated enough to take a couple hours and put the finishing touches on it.
Meanwhile, here are a few older pieces for your enjoyment.
First up, a traditional airbrush piece from 1991. I always liked this one, but most folks who have seen it are lukewarm to it, for unspecified reasons.

I like the fact that it's hand work! I really miss my old Badger airbrush- no idea what happened to it. I suspect I lost it in the Great Relationship Disaster of '93.
So it goes.
The grasses could be a little subtler, and the fade to the sunset a bit more gradual, but otherwise this piece really grabs me.
I always thought this would be a nice T-shirt. Please don't steal it!
A few years later, circa 1997, I completed a handful of illustrations for a proposed children's book. I had written it as well. Sadly, most of the text is gone now (though I could rewrite it fairly easily, I suppose) and these illustrations are pretty much all that's left.
The book was an alphabet book on pirates.
There were a couple other pages that I liked, but they were too derivative of other works- in one case, Charles Vess' work on the Marvel graphic novel The Raven Banner, in another, Joe Orlando's pirate pages in Watchmen- so if I ever move farther on this project (big if!), I'll rework those.
Here are the pages and their alphabetical topics:

Women Were Pirates too!

Privateers

Hispaniola, the Pirate Haven

Mostly painted with colored inks on heavy watercolor paper.
Again, there are things that work here and things that don't. I'm most pleased with the image of women pirates, because my research was so spot-on, and because I like the mood of it.
The girls looking on in the bottom corner are the ostensible stars of the book. The blond is exploring the world of pirates and immersing herself in it. She shows up on scattered pages. I thought every page would be a bit much.
Next week- more something. I hope for a new page, but- more something!