SBD-3 Dauntless scale drawing
After a year and a half of research, my SBD-3 scale drawing is finally finished. Once I have my initial color template completed, I intend on doing 3-4 aircraft from the Battle of Midway between now and the 80th anniversary of that battle next June. The first profiles...
P-51B-15-NA, Lt. Joe Blackburn, 5th Fighter Squadron
P-51B-15-NA "Little Joe" 43-24818, 5th Fighter Squadron, 52nd Fighter Group, Lt. Joe Blackburn, Madna, Italy, June 1944. Click the gallery thumbnail below for a larger view of this aircraft.
Natural metal experiments
Finally getting some free time to get back to work on a natural metal P-51 profile I've been experimenting with. So far this has 629 layers in Photoshop, still some work to do on surface detailing, skin stress ripples, etc. I'm pleased with how this is turning out,...
Fighters of the Iron Cross released
Eagle Editions has just released Fighters of the Iron Cross, featuring quite a few of my Luftwaffe profile illustrations in it. This is Jerry Crandall's magnum opus on Luftwaffe fighters, if you are a fan of WWII aviation this is a must have for your library. You can...
North American P-51B, Major James Howard, 356th Fighter Squadron
North American P-51B, Major James Howard, 356th Fighter Squadron, March 1944, RAF Boxted, England. After James Howard served with the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) in China, he was commissioned as a Captain in the USAAF in July 1942. In 1943 he was promoted...
DING HAO begins to take form…
My new P-51B profile template begins with blocking in basic colors and then adding highlights and shadows in multiple layers, each one stacking on top of the last and giving more depth to the aircraft's form. Most of my profiles will end up with 500-600 individual...
Why an accurate scale drawing is critical
The reason I spend so much time researching and creating an accurate scale drawing for my color profiles is if the drawing has dimensional errors, the aircraft's markings will not line up where they should. Either the marking will have to be 'fudged' and stretched or...
The beginning of James Howard’s P-51B ‘Ding Hao’ profile
My new profile project is James Howard's P-51B 'Ding Hao'. As my existing P-51B profile template is about 20 years old, I am starting from scratch and creating a new scale drawing and profile template for the project. As aways, the first step is gathering the research...
Getting it Right – P-51 Radios
One very common mistake in many published drawings of P-51B/Cs is the depiction of the SCR-274 radio behind the pilot for all models prior to the D. The SCR-274 was only used on early P-51s without the fuselage fuel tank (shown below left), so when depicting a B or C...
VF-17 National Insignia
F4U-1A (BuNo 17652) Ens. Frederick J. 'Big Jim' Streig, November 1943. As can be found in many photos of VF-17 aircraft (White 5 & 7 are widely published examples), insignia outlines exhibit two tonal values, which red would not do. By late 1943 color photos of...