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Here you can see the five main
steps it takes to complete a painting.
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The Big Idea
I've been reading a lot about the air mail lately and I seem to be finding it easy to get ideas from all the little stories from the pilots and incidents reported. I will be sitting with a book and a sketch pad and the ideas start to take a visual form. These little thumbnail sketches are literally all over my house. The order that I do the paintings will depend on the amount of information I have at the time. I have a lot of sketches that need more research before I can comfortably get started. |
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Supermodels
I used to be one of those scale model fanatics who would spend a day making seat belts out of human hair. Now I just build them good enough to shoot for artwork. This is an old 1/48 scale DH-4 kit I found on Ebay. The quality is bad so I'll have to do a ton of research. I always shoot in sunlight. Artificial light makes the shadows out of whack. I just set up a scene and move around it with my camera until I get an angle I like. Note the nut I used to get the shadow for the stump. I tweaked the photo in PhotoPaint to get it where I wanted it. |
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Getting Closer
Next I'll do a really rough watercolor sketch just to make sure it will be worth the effort to continue. These are small. About 10 X 12 on little cheapy watercolor blocks. I like to do these sketches as it's good speed practice for me. I like the looseness and the fact that I don't have to get all worried about details. |
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Details, Details
Now comes the hard part. Hard but fun. I do a detailed line drawing the same size it will be painted to finalize details and to make my mistakes in pencil rather than on the canvas. I will use my models, but more importantly photos from a multitude of sources. These old planes are tough simply because of the lack of color photography in that era. When I am happy with the drawing (which usually doesn't mean all the detail) I transfer it to a canvas and start to get messy. Actually, doing the painting takes less time than getting ready. |
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Ready
To Hang
The completed painting is an
acrylic on stretched canvas.
"The Sunbury Stump"
20" X 30" Acrylic on
canvas
This painting is based on a true story. Read about it on the
"Paintings and Stories"
page.
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