Keith Ferris: Disciplined Aviation Artist

If you have visited the Air and Space Museum on the Washington DC mall, you probably viewed the huge mural (above) of U.S. Army B-17 bombers under attack. It was painted by acclaimed aviation artist Keith Ferris (1929 - ). His Wikipedia entry is here. A series of images of his studio begins here.

There are three basic approaches to depicting the shape of an aircraft. One is to copy a photograph or use a photo as the basis and make slight adjustments to compensate for camera lens distortion of the subject. The second approach is to "eyeball" the subject, either by observing it in person or making use of reference photos so as to understand the subject's shape from differing viewpoints. This runs the greatest risk of creating an unrealistic depiction. Finally, the artist can make use of descriptive geometry to construct an image derived from two or more scaled profile of plan views of the subject airplane. Absent computer imaging software, description geometry is time-consuming, but yields proportionally accurate results (given the degree of perspective forcing used).

Keith Ferris preferred to use descriptive geometry, combining that with a good sense of composition and scene-setting.

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Dawn of a New Era - No. 504 Squadron Meteor IIIs over central London - by Frank Wootton - 1945
First, I contrast Ferris' work with that of another famous aviation artist, Frank Wootton (1911-1998). I might be wrong, but I think Wootton either never used that approach or else did so seldomly. The Gloster Meteor jet fighters in the image above do not quite seem realistic to me. This might be due to a lack of photos of them at the time he made the painting not long after the war had ended.

First of the Few - test flight of first production Spitfire - by Frank Wootton - 1980
Wootton painted this scene many years later. I need to note that most of his images were realistic views of the subject aircraft. But this Spitfire's wings seem out of proportion -- granting that "Spits" are difficult to draw properly. This is clearly a "freehand" job by Wootton.

Spitfire - by Keith Ferris
Now a Spitfire depiction by Ferris.

Spitfire workup - by Keith Ferris
It seem much more realistic because he did this workup before creating the final image.

Descriptive geometry detail of F-4 Phantom - by Wade Meyers
I include this as another example of a descriptive geometry based illustration in process.

Keith Ferris doing a workup at his drawing board
Photo from Farris' Web site showing him at work during an early stage of a project.

Farmer's Nightmare - Curtiss P-3A from Kelly Field, Texas
Ferris was the son of an Army Air Corps pilot who was stationed at Kelly Field (the main AAC training base during the 1930s). Keith would have been very young when P-3s were flown there, so this painting and the one below are more a tribute to that era than any distinct childhood memory of such planes.

Curtiss P-3As over Kelley Field

Real Trouble - Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 190 interceptors
One of many World War 2 images painted by Ferris.

Test of Courage - Fw 190 attacking a B-17
The same squadron attacking B-17s. The Fw 190 was firing at the bomber and the B-17 was spitting back 30 caliber machine gun fire from two positions, each using two such weapons. In such a situation the German fighter might have been shot down instead of the bomber.

To Little, Too Late - showing one of the few Army P-40s that got airborne during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Russell J. Brown shooting down a MiG-15 in the first jet-to-jet air combat, 8 November, 1950

Battle of Bien How Air Base - F-100 scramble

Perspective in Pompeii Paintings

Our cruise ship docked at Naples and, I suspect, most of the passengers going ashore had signed up for tours of Pompeii and other sites on the far side of the Bay of Naples.

Not me. Been there done that a couple of times. But I'd previously spent only two or so hours in Naples and really wanted to visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (National Archaeological Museum, Naples). That's because it has a collection of the better-preserved wall paintings from places covered by Vesuvius' ash. (What's left on-site is mostly low-quality in terms of preservation.)

In this post I deal with how Roman artists dealt with situations calling for one-point perspective. That is, where buildings or parts of them are portrayed.

Geometrically-derived linear perspective wasn't discovered until about the time of the Renaissance, though some Classical artists were aware of its general effect and attempted to include that in their work. Sadly, aside from the buried art in and around Pompeii, little has survived due to its perishable condition (as compared to robust sculptural art).

Here is an interesting article dealing with Pompeiian perspective. Precise single vanishing points are not found, though clusters of convergences in small areas are. The article makes the further claim that in the real world we don't really observe one-point perspective aside from limited circumstances, this due to eyeball movement as we view things.

Here are some snapshots I took of items in the museum depicting structures. Click on images to enlarge.

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The face at the top is of a mask.  Assuming a high viewing point, the receding lines of the tall yellow building roughly approximate linear perspective. Other structural objects do not.

Two related paintings. Linear perspective is essentially absent here.

Perspective here seems mostly isometric.

Only the buildings at the left have a sense of perspective.

The central (framed) structure with multiple columns relates to the upper part of the projecting structure to the left, which otherwise is isometric. The tiled roof is completely at odds with perspective.

The main structures depicted here exhibit a cluster of vanishing points not far from where Renaissance painters would place a single point. Only the structure with columns at the left deviates seriously.

Painting Shiny Metal: Rembrandt and Wootton

I recently wrote here about British artist/illustrator Frank Wootton (1914-1998) who was skilled at depicting light, shade and reflections on shiny metallic surfaces. Doing this convincingly requires skill and especially experience.

Just for fun, below I present some images by Wootton along with a few by Rembrandt who also was no slouch when it came to metal.

The Wootton images are photos of details of paintings I saw in the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, just north of London. Lighting conditions were poor, and protective material affected color and allowed reflections, so keep in mind that what you're viewing is an approximation.

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Man with the Golden Helmet - c.1650 (detail)
Note how Rembrandt deals with the effect of light on warm gold and cool steel.

Man in Armor - 1655
Here he deals with steel.  I'm not sure if the painting has been cleaned and colors are original or if the yellow hue is due to old varnish.

Old Man in Military Costume - 1630-31
An earlier painting, but one I find particularly impressive because he depicts brushed steel convincingly.

April Morning, France, 1918 - 1982 (detail)
This is a tiny part of a much larger Wootton painting and might be close to actual size when viewed on a desktop computer screen.  The aircraft is a Sopwith Camel with metal at the forward part of the fuselage.  Note how he shows reflections.  Also the effect of light on the gunsight in front of the cockpit windscreen.

Harts Over the Himalayas - c. 1967 (detail)
The darker zone is actually a shadow of Yr. Loyal Blogger on the protective glass or plastic.  The forward metaled area reflects the sky, the upper wing and the mountainous terrain below.

Wilhelm Trübner's Flat Brushwork

Wilhelm Trübner (1851-1917) created smoothly-painted scenes early in his career, but by his 30s had drifted to styles with increased emphasis on what are called "formal qualities" of a painting (the parts not related to depiction of a subject). This concept eventually evolved into pure abstraction, whereby all a painting had were such qualities (characteristics) and no subject matter. In Trübner's case, he mostly made paintings where brushwork was strongly evident, many brushstrokes done using wide, flat brushes.

I posted about this kind of brushwork here, and included one of Trübner's paintings.

His Wikipedia entry is here, and from it you might want to go to the German entry, which has more detail.

Below are images of some of Trübner's paintings in this style, most of which are from around the year 1900.

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Cronberg in Taunus - 1896
The kind of brushwork I've been mentioning can be seen at the lower left.

Schloß Lichtenberg im Odenwald - 1900
A later landscape painting with even more obvious brushwork.

Erna von Holzhausen on Horseback - 1901
This portrait is dominated by strong brushwork -- especially on the horse.

Self-Portrait with Hat - 1902
Heavy, flat brushstrokes are used selectively here: note the smooth background and largely smoothly painted coat and vest.

Dame mit Schwarzem Halsband - Lady with Black Collar - 1909
A later painting where Trübner was still using that style.

Stehender Rückenakt - Back View of Standing Nude - 1898
This was made before Fauvism and its arbitrary use of color. The use of blue on the figure helps relate it to the background. (I've noted in some other posts that it's not easy to fit nudes into outdoor settings with plenty of foliage ... skin tones and foliage are rough complementary colors. Here Trübner chose to use a nonrealistic color, blue, on both the nude and the folliage.)

Some Unfinished Thomas Lawrence Portraits

I last wrote about Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) here.

He was a prolific portrait painter, creating works both fine and mediocre, though most were competently done. Some were never completed, and a few of those are the subject of this post.

I find unfinished works interesting because they shed light on artists' techniques and general approach to the job. In Lawrences's case, he invariably completed the face first, along with enough background to put the colors in intended context. The remainder would be very roughly indicated.

One strongly recommended approach to painting is to work the entire canvas throughout the process. This indeed makes a lot of sense when painting landscapes or still-lifes. But a portrait painter needs to be sure the subject's face is captured to his (and probably his sitter's) satisfaction. So why waste time and paint working the whole canvas if it turns out that the face isn't done right? That seems to have been Lawrence's philosophy if the paintings shown below are any indication.

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King George IV, When Prince of Wales - c. 1814
This can be seen in London's National Portrait Gallery.

Maria, Lady Callcott - 1819

William Wilberforce - 1828
Also in the National Portrait Gallery.  Here Lawrence sketched in more non-facial detail than usual, perhaps due to the size and shape of the canvas.  He probably wanted to make sure he got the overall composition right, something not needed on more tightly focused subjects.

John Frederick Campbell, 2nd Baron Campbell and 1st Earl Cawdor - 1829
Painted not long before Lawrences' death, so perhaps he didn't have the time or energy to complete it.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington - c. 1829
The same hold true for this portrait of the Duke of Wellington as Prime Minister.  It is a recent acquisition by the National Portrait Gallery.  The caption on the painting's plaque notes that Lady Jersey, who commissioned the portrait, refused to have a studio assistant complete it following Lawrences's death.

Details by Detaille

I wrote about French military artist Édouard Detaille -- Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille (1848-1912) -- here.

A recent visit to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris brought me back in contact with a painting by him that the museum calls Remise de ses nouveaux drapeaux et étendards à l’Armée Française sur l’Hippodrome de Longchamp, le 14 Juillet 1880 (Web site citation here).

It is a large-scale study for a painting titled La distribution des drapeaux à Longchamp par le président Jules Grévy le 14 Juillet 1880 (link here) that Detaille chose to destroy after it had been exhibited. Apparently it hadn't been well-received, and Detaille also was somewhat dissatisfied with it. Some segments were cut out and later displayed as standalone works.

Readers interested in painters' techniques might wish to examine the photos I took of parts of the study version in the Musée de l'Armée. Detaille included an immense number of figures in the foreground and elsewhere, and readers can see how he indicated these. Click on my photos to considerably enlarge.

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Image of the painting from the Musée de l'Armée web site.

Establishment photo I took showing the lighting conditions as my camera chose to depict them.

Detail photo.

Detail photo.

Detail photo.

Fragment of the finished painting.

Fragment of the finished painting.

Joseph Clement Coll: Ink, Pen, and a Bit of Brush

Joseph Clement Coll (1881-1921) died at too young an age, of appendicitis. A cynic might call that tragic event "a smart career move" because Coll's pen-and-ink+brush style would rapidly fall out of illustration fashion during the 1920s. On the other hand, he did produce some illustrations in other media that were competently done. That competence plus his sense of portraying dramatic action might have stood him well had he lived longer.

His brief Wikipedia entry is here. A more personal appraisal by Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. is here, and a Muddy Colors post about him by Greg Ruth is here.

Coll produced a huge amount of illustrations during his comparatively short career, so there naturally was variation in quality. Below I present a collection of what I consider his better work. Most of his illustrations were vignettes or non-framed full-page illustrations with plenty of white space. When he did framed illustrations or illustrations of night scenes, the results were usually murky looking -- an effect hard to avoid given his preferred medium.

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Strong composition.

A confrontation with Fu Manchu.

Fu Manchu again.

Another striking composition.

A "King of the Khyber Rifles" illustration from 1916 (Kelly collection) that's so cluttered and murky that some of the action is lost.

A "framed" illustration, also from the Kelly collection, where the penwork works against the subject matter again.

Here we find penwork augmented by spots of bold brushwork.

Another example of Coll's brushwork-plus-line. There might be some water-thinned ink or ink washes here too, but one would have to view the original art to be sure.

A fine example of Coll's brush+line.

I wonder if some of this was scratchboard. It's framed, but not as heavy as in some examples above. At the top of the image appear to be U.S. Cavalry troopers, and the female might be Victory. Perhaps the 1916 Mexican incursion rather than the Great War.