Aero-Painting

It’s always encouraging, a good start – for example see this old snap. Recognise the stylish chap in red just behind the starter’s Saltire? No?

Many years have passed since that day at a Kirkcaldy Scramble – and yet I find I’m still behind the Saltire. Ha!

But the “good start” today refers to a new aeroplane-painting on the stocks. I’ve been ranting for a long while now about the origination of most modern aero-painting with its increasingly computer generated drawing and mechanically produced overlays and Photo-shopped images that simply need painted up to the outlines to produce. Folks that do this are perhaps painters but are they artists? They are not. Neither have I any time for photographic representational paintings that could easily be bettered by simply being a photograph. Aviation Artists? Where is the flair and imagination of the true Artist? I’ve had a scunner for a while about my own stuff too and find these days that the only way I can hold my head up over a painting is when it has been drawn directly onto paper or canvas and adjusted and modified until it looks right. An original photo can well be copied – but by eye and not mechanically – not tracing, not even sizing-up using squared graph-like paper. Well – that’s my take on it anyway. Almost like real drawing ,eh?

It being the New Year, I was keen to get started on something positive. I should be out putting in the miles on my bicycle and reducing the results of the Season’s excesses, but the weather is just too crap for me at present. So I thought I’d try to start on a painting. I think my favourite WW1 aeroplane is the Halberstadt DIII and I found a good photo of one without any photo-distortion to it. (Photo-distortion seems to be another favourite factor amongst my beloved non-selective Aero -“artists”). No drawing at all with this pic below. It was painted straight onto the board and adjusted as I go. And there’s a lot to go.

But I think it’s going to be OK, this one. And that’ll be a Caudron G4 down below………

Actually, it’ll be two Caudrons below to balance things out. This is painted on a smooth panel – I’ve always painted on fine linen canvasses until now and I’ll admit it was because I though panels were a cheap option to stretched canvas. But I really like the smoothness of this panel. Time will tell about the ability to paint fine detail thereon. So this is stage two below. That Halberstadt is such a nice shape. Definitely my favourite WW1 aeroplane!

My Media-adviser (Ruthie) assures me I have to have a THEME for successful blogging. That’s a shame as I thought I’d try to cover Aeroplanes, Steam Locomotives, the Caledonian and Highland Railways, Bicycles and cycling, Running, Music, perhaps Photography and Colour theory. Artists materials, Running shoes, Saxophones, BSA Gold Stars, First World War history and maybe more.
Oh well – I shall be on Aero-Painting then. With occasional deviations.
There’s an Edinburgh school which has an impressive list of former pupils – amongst whom were the Barnwell Brothers. Harold became a test-pilot for Vickers but died in a crash in 1918. Frank however was a designer with Bristol and produced the Great War’s Bristol Scout, M1 Monoplane, Bristol Fighter and then went on to create the Blenheim prototype between the wars.
That very school now requires an image for a 2014 WW1 Centenary publication and it’s to be the Bristol Fighter (or “Biff” to its crews.)
I thought I’d try one in a more unusual but still authentic setting. Having a tussle with a Rumpler CIV in Palestine regions.
From No.1 Squadron Australian Flying Corps. The fuselage is overpainted in white, either for recognition or for easier spotting on the ground in case of engine-failure