Travel Air: Finished Product

Well, as usual, life got in the way of rapid progress. But I did eventually find the time to do the work. The painting, as complete:

Haufe Commission, acrylic on linen, 14 x 20"

Some really cool ideas have been bouncing around in my head for several days now. Keep checking in, as I intend to be better about posting regularly.

Travel Air: Full-Scale Graphite

The final step before we move to paint. All the major comp issues have been solved, clearance has been given and I expect that the painting process will move rapidly.

Study for Haufe Commission, 14x20", graphite

Stay tuned.

Travel Air: DG Plot

Two renders down, none to go. The first was some fifteen feet above the eyeline, way too far, which I figured out about halfway through when I realized I could see the port wingtip. WHOOPS.

Having calmly scrubbed the mess so made and then serenely fixed and checked the station point (pay no attention to the untidy lines of harried calculations in the corner), I got through the rest in five or six hours, spread out over two days. As usual, time and nature conspire to keep me from my painting.

DG Plot for Haufe Comission, Graphite, 18x24"

Now that I've finished laying the lines down, I move on to the full-scale graphite for final approval. The T-hangars along the east side have to be rendered, as they were left out of the concept, and some other minor comp corrections remain. I expect to have that all done early next week.

Detail

As soon as the graphite is done and approved, we move on to paint and color. This is turning out to be a really fun challenge; I'm particularly looking forward to attacking the thousand-and-one shades on the ostensibly red, white and blue airplane.

Proof #2: over the fence

Second rough, put a couple of hours into this one. Again, graphite, 7x10". This one shows the n-number and paint to much better effect, and the feeling hasn't suffered much for it. The moment of the flare was the client's first instinct as to what he wanted, and I feel it may be the stronger of the two.

Problems to be sorted out if this one goes full scale: Fix currently neutral dihedral. Get better reference for local geography; what I've seen seems to indicate that the eastern side of the field may be littered with small buildings. Finalize weak cloud structure--lone happy cumulus looks weird out there, though it was meant to direct. Stay tuned.

Proof #1: cruising flight

The first graphite rough, 7 x 10". Cruising flight, 3/4 backlight dancing on the clouds. The custom paint is visible, though not perhaps to best effect, and the N-number would show up in the full-sized painting, if a little less prominently. But this angle makes for a much more dynamic comp. Second to be executed starting tomorrow.

Problems: Starboard wingtip is cropped awkwardly. Need more depth in the cloudscape.

Travel Air painting

Working this week on a comission from a gentleman who once owned a Beech D95 Travel Air, which sadly was totaled about ten years ago in a training accident. I thought it might be a perfect way to get the ball rolling on this new blog.

First things first: the criteria. After meeting with my client, I came away with two very different but both fundamentally sound scenarios to work towards, with the airplane either coming over the fence at KPOU 24, dirty, or cruising at altitude with some kind of dramatic skyscape in the background. In either case it is important that we see the N-number and the custom paint work so that the airplane is distinguishable from all the other 95s out there. It was a gorgeous hunk of airplane, by the way.

The peculiarities of a light twin are such that any low angle is going to be tricky, with those nacelles blocking the cabin or registration. But that low angle is going to be the key to really feeling the landing flare. With a mind towards that I've gone to thumbnails. Here are a few of them.




Currently I'm looking at developing the last one on each page. The first one as cruising flight and the second as touchdown. Both are of a nice side of the plane and also show the numbers prominently. Watch out for the proof sketches sometime early next week.

Welcome!

After many moons of keeping a personal blog with occasional posts about my art but more often about nonsense, I decided it's time to get on the horse and put together a decent working portfolio. To get me off on the right foot I've imported a couple of posts about my most recent painting.

This blog is a stopgap solution; I happen to be a web developer and will be working on a shiny site, but until the workload lightens up in that department this is going to be the place to see what I'm doing with paint. And graphite. And ink, Sharpie, chalk, collage and who knows what else. It's bound to be exciting, at any rate. So strap in tight as I light the fires and kick the tires!

Or, to loosely paraphrase Jackie Gleason: "Up, up and away!"

...Or something.

Days Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten

Well, I've been so very busy between painting and shoveling snow that I've neglected my duties as a blogger. But, having burned myself out, I present to you, the reader, my finished painting. I am varnishing it in between typing, and have just finished submitting in time for the Pensacola show. Now I bite my nails for three weeks while I wait for the letter.

Curtain Call, Acrylic, 18 X 32"

Detail of U-853

Detail of Bradley

The brief description submitted, which will hang on the wall next to the painting if I'm juried in:

Curtain Call
On 5 May 1945, just days after Germany's capitulation, Ensign John Bradley was flying a TBM-3E Avenger at low level on a training mission over Block Island Sound when his radioman, ARM-2 Clifford Brinson, spotted the distinctive "laundry-basket" conning tower and angular hull of a type IX-C U-boat, U-853, as it breached the flats off of Montauk Point. Observing strict radio silence, Bradley turned and sped at wavetop height to Quonset Point NAS, where he reported the sighting. It is unclear why no immediate action was taken, but late that afternoon the collier Black Point was torpedoed in shallow water. Three destroyers in the area quickly responded and intercepted U-853, dropping over 200 depth charges and sinking it with all hands. It was the last U-boat sunk in American waters. Today it lies in 120 feet of water just off of Point Judith, RI, and is a popular but treacherous dive site. Bradley went on to fly Mariners and Marlins for the Navy, retiring as a Commander, and resides in Rhode Island.

Onward! I've got a surprise project laid down and lined up for painting, and then two or three really good ideas to be developed. Stay tuned.

A Bit of Local History (Art Resulting)

For those of you who haven't heard: There was a Battle of Point Judith.

Das Boot in question was U-853, a Type IXC-40, seen at right in port. The date of the incident was 5 May, 1945. Berlin and Hitler had been overrun by Russians the week before, and new Fürher Karl Dönitz had sent the word out to the 49 U-boats still patrolling the world's oceans to cease hostile action (many had been sent across the Atlantic to American coastal waters in the last weeks of the war to disrupt shipping with an eye towards better surrender terms). Whether the crew of U-853 ignored the message out of fanaticism--or, more likely, simply missed the call--is still hotly debated. But the answer went to the bottom with the crew; the facts remain that on 5 May U-853's crew made a reckless decision to torpedo the collier Black Point in shallow water, and less than ten miles from the Atlantic Fleet's Destroyer Headquarters in Newport, their immediate and thorough destruction resulting. U-853 was the last U-boat sunk in American waters, and one of the last sunk, period.

But our story doesn't end here. Well, okay-maybe it ends here, but there's some more stuff in the middle.

On the morning of 5 May, then-Ensign John Bradley of VC-15, who was on detachment at the time with Anti-Submarine Development Squadron Atlantic at Quonset Point NAS, was piloting a TBM-3E Avenger at low level near Montauk Point, training American sub crews, when his radioman, Clifford Brinson, spotted the long, low form of a submarine. It was 4 or 5 miles off the right wing, where it shouldn't have been. Taking a closer look, they suddenly realized that it was the distinctive "laundry basket" conning tower of a Type IX U-boat they were seeing, heading east towards Block Island.

Observing the strict radio silence protocol then in effect, Bradley made a beeline on the deck for Quonset to report the sighting. He recalls that, typically of Rhode Island weather, the visibility deteriorated quickly as he flew up the coast; heading up the West Passage only minutes later, he noted that the upper half of the old Jamestown bridge was obscured by fog. He landed at Quonset and reported to the Detachment commander, then walked back outside to find the base completely socked in.

It seems that in spite of Bradley's actions nothing was done, and in fact no records remain of the report. Perhaps it was dismissed, or maybe the lousy weather kept the destroyer fleet from mobilizing and hunting down U-853 before the Black Point was torpedoed.

This year marks the centennial for naval aviation, and also the 25th for the ASAA, so it's kind of a big year for aviation art. To this end our annual exhibition and forum is being held this year in Pensacola at the Naval Aviation Museum. With this in mind, I've been looking for a good naval subject to submit. Not only does this fit the bill perfectly, but also it happens to be a moment of pertinent and interesting local history, which satisfies the Rhode Islander's native inferiority complex. Now if only I can get it done by the sumbmission deadline, 1 February.

Progress so far: Into and out of thumbnails (see below). Selecting the moment was pretty straightforward: Bradley, keeping one eye on the boat, has begun to turn towards Quonset, only 100-150 feet off the waves. The cloud cover at the time was reported as overcast with low scattered, which gives me some freedom in balancing the cloud masses.

As the refinement process went on, I decided on a wide-format painting. Eventually I came up with a balance I liked, and enlarged it slightly (seen below):


I've done the DG plot, but I may need another. With a station point 33.6ft aft, 86.3ft port, and 22.9ft above the spinner, and therefore an azimuth span of 26 degrees, the viewing angle is pretty wide, as is the 60-degree picture plane. Expect to see another early next week.

In the meantime, I have the full tonal drawing to execute. I have two weeks to get this sucker painted. Can I do it? Stay tuned to find out.