As a military aviator and the son of a military aviator, I suppose it’s in my blood to study and depict historical aviation scenes. I first tried my hand at this genre early in my flying career with a pencil sketch of an F-4 Phantom (the first operational fighter of my career). While serving as an exchange officer with the Royal Air Force, one of my British squadron mates was an aviation historian and writer. He commissioned me to draw several versions of the British Canberra bomber. Years later, after my uncle died (a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific War), I decided to honor his memory by painting a depiction of one of his last WW II missions in the F4U Corsair.
Most recently, I had the artistic urge (I get those fairly often) to paint a WW II bomber scene. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the B-25—just something about its size and shape, and its place in history. I only needed to choose a worthy context and setting. I started studying the various models of this aircraft, flying squadrons and the types of missions they flew. In that research, I stumbled upon a wonderful website honoring the men and machines of the 489th Bomber Squadron (check it out . I spent many hours studying the history of the squadron and going through every photo I could find of the aviators, the aircraft and the environment from which they operated.
My decision was made. I bought a plastic model of the B-25J, then built and painted it. I looked for photographs from which to paint a background. I wanted dark stormy clouds that would provide a dramatic contrast to the sunlit bombers. Once the background was painted, I photographed my model in varying angles and with the sunlight bouncing of it in a way that would correspond to the background. It was then on to Photoshop to arrange my model photographs into a reasonable composition. With that done, I printed out the aircraft at the appropriate size and traced them lightly onto the background painting to ensure I’d got the scale and proportions correct. Then began the challenging task of pushing paint around on a canvas in a way that resembles something real.
When my painting was finally complete and dry, I entered it into a couple of local art shows. My painting was “juried into” the Colorado Springs Art Guild regional show and the Cottonwood Center for the Arts show honoring the region’s military heritage. Hope you like it. It's the most complicated and largest painting I've ever done.
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