Brandon's Historical Leader Series

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New drawing series I have started today, with each piece depicting a historical leader with their native civilization in the background. My inspiration comes from the Civilization computer game series by Sid Meier. All colors are from Copic markers.


Pharaoh Hatshepsut of Kemet (1508-1458 BC), one of the few female monarchs in the country's long history


Ngola Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba (1583-1663 AD), known for resisting Portuguese invasions in southwestern Africa (the area now called Angola)

Nice pics. I love the Civilization game series.

Just curious. Whenever you see "photos" of pharaohs, or even Hollywood's depictions, they're usually white. Yours are pretty dark-skinned. The people of Egypt/Tunisia/Syria are pretty much Caucasian, albeit tanned with curly black hair. Which is the most accurate?

For what it's worth, this is how the Egyptians painted themselves in comparison to neighboring peoples:



The Egyptians in that picture are the cocoa-brown dudes in the lower left area. I don't know about you, but I would call them Black African if I saw them today, even if they are lighter than the really dark Nubians.

There's also some genetic data taken from the mummified remains of prominent ancient Egyptians which suggests sub-Saharan African relations:

http://dnatribes.com/dnatribes-digest-2013-02-01.pdf

Sundjata (or Sundiata) Keita (1217-1255 AD), legendary founder of the Mali Empire in West Africa. I have a copy of his epic transcribed by the historian D.T. Niane, which I bought on Amazon a couple of years ago.