The United States Navy (USN) Seal

The United States Navy (USN) is the sea branch of the United States armed forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during the American Revolutionary War and was essentially disbanded as a separate entity shortly thereafter.

History: The first American Navy seal was approved by the Continental Congress in 1780. Since then, the seal underwent numerous changes. Recommendations from Secretaries of the Navy, heraldic experts, and historians resulted in this final seal design approved by President Eisenhower in 1957.

Description: On a circular background of fair sky and moderate sea with land in sinister base, a three-masted square-rigged ship underway before a fair breeze with after topsail furled, commission pennant atop the foremast, National Ensign atop the main, and the commodore's flag atop the mizzen. In front of the ship a Luce-type anchor inclined slightly bendwise with the crown resting on the land and, in front of the shank and in back of the dexter fluke, an American bald eagle rising to sinister regarding to dexter, one foot on the ground, the other resting on the anchor near the shank; all in proper colors. The whole within a blue annulet bearing the inscrip tion "Department of the Navy" at top, and "United States of America" at the bottom, separated on each side by a mullet and within a rim in the form of a rope; inscription, rope, mullet, and edges of annulet all gold. Land in the design would symbolize the Navy's supporting shore facilities as well as the fleet's amphibious strike capabilities. Since the wording "Navy Department," used on earlier seals, had generally come to signify only the

headquarters activities in Washington, the inscription was changed to "Department of the Navy" in order to embrace the Navy's total world-wide operations afloat, in the air, and ashore.

Above Information Provided by the Navy Historical Center and The Institute of Heraldry

About the “US Navy Seal” artwork: The design has been recreated in vector form in Adobe Illustrator CS4. Afterwards, it has been digitally enhanced in Photoshop CS4. Once again, my unique layered process was used. The main goal of my “Military Insignia” projects, was to highlight beauty of the design, without

altering the official version of the seal. As always, I tried to achieve a nice 3D effect, by utilizing unobtrusive drop-shadows. I also emphasized textures of several woods, as well as anchor metals and flag silks. And, of course, some nice gold and enamels didn’t hurt.

As always, the above artworks are available  via my “Military Insignia” galleries from FineArt America and RedBubble. You can just follow the links in the article to get to the corresponding galleries.

To active duty or reserve military personnel, veterans and their family members: I grant an explicit permission to download the above images to be used for non-profit/non-commercial and charitable causes, benefiting troops and their families, as well as for non-commercial internal duty-specific purposes, such as unit website design, training materials and presentations. 

Foreword…

Have you ever thought of military heraldry as a form of art? Have you ever had a feeling that these precise and striking images are not fully understood and somewhat underappreciated? Have you ever wondered, what were the origins and history behind military emblems and symbols? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then this blog might be for you.

I have always been interested in heraldry. There is something mysterious and at the same time precise and certain about these compact and informative images. And definitely a lot of history - layers upon layers of it. While working on one of my large projects, called “The Small World”, recreating graphically enhanced historical and modern coats of arms of world countries, I noticed something. Heraldry of certain countries was seriously underrepresented. The coats of arms available in media and retail were of poor quality, with very few products or souvenirs available on the market.

Being ex-military myself, the next logical step for me was to research the situation with military heraldry. The result was even more discouraging. You will not be able to find any of the high-resolution quality military insignia images for many of the active branches and units of US and Canadian armed forces, not even mentioning the great numbers of deactivated and historical ones . This is how project “Military Insignia” came to life.

The basis of the project is my “Military Insignia” galleries at FineArt America and RedBubble. The plan is to recreate the largest collection of high quality military insignia under one umbrella. At the same time, there will be an opportunity to choose any of my artworks, and have it featured as a wonderful piece of wall art or one of the various products available.

I will be using my unique technique I call Multi-Layer Enhancement and Texturing Technique (or M-LETT 2.5D; I discuss it in detail in this post), recreating branch insignia, regimental coats of arms, shoulder sleeve insignia, emblems, badges and patches of all branches and majority of units of US and Canadian armed forces. My main tools of the trade will be Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The result should be a collection of stunning realistic images, enhanced with textures of metals, enamels, precious stones, rare woods and ivory, at the same time retaining all the proper colors and attributes of the insignia.

As I progress, I will be posting my latest artwork on this blog, along with brief descriptions and interesting facts about particular units and their insignia. I would also encourage any feedback. Commissions are welcome as time permits. This is going to be a project of grand scale, which would take years to complete. So, my friends, you are all welcome to join me on my journey!