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!