Spotted in Feb 2020 (post backdated to 2019!) by Hayden Bruce in Perth, WA, is this full-on aircraft graffiti. Not immediately obvious is that it’s an adaptation from one of the many box-top artworks from the Revell 1/72 kit 04678 of the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 ‘Condor‘. Impressive effort! Anyone with more info on it, please…
Category: Art
Santa Baby, Santa Bou
Christmas Eve. Lots of Santa Claus-with-aircraft-posts, but this story from the Aviation Geek club here (do click, have a read, come back) is a fascinating story. In the Vietnam War, an American Caribou transport was painted as a Santa reindeer for Christmas: ‘No group of children ever carried off the fantasy so well. A young…
Man & Prop
An aquatint artwork today. Aviation seems to have only made the margins of fine art, like most forms of modern transport. Here’s an example which could almost be in a Renaissance collection. Entitled Propeller, 1934, William Heaslip, Associated American Artists, etching and aquatint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum (link). Artistically, it’s an interesting composition….
Double Cross
A pair of images showing preliminary designs and final artwork by the doyen of UK box art, Roy Cross. Above is the original design for the Airfix Beaufighter and Me 109G.6 ‘Dog Fight Double’ set – note how the final art has the Reich defence rocket tubes under the wings, as per the original kit,…
Hindermost
Today’s something different again. Here’s the postwar painting entitled ‘Bomber Crash’ by Australian Frank Hinder, who was working with the Camouflage Wing of the Royal Australian Engineers during World War Two. At first it seems to be a semi-abstract fire image, the details become evident as the picture is read. Held in the Australian War…
Indy’s Matte Boat
Of course everyone’s favourite archaeologist, Indiana Jones, travels in a flying boat. In this case in the first film, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. But how? Here’s a web page covering a ‘then and now’ of the Short Solent Mk.III that stood in for the extinct Pan Am Boeing 314. It’s the survivor at the…
Firebomb Fritz
A wartime British defensive propaganda character (mostly forgotten today) was ‘Firebomb Fritz’. Here in colour: …and here in black and white, both by Reginald Mount. (Original UK National Archives caption: “Fritz in Nazi bomber” by Reginald Mount, 1942 Catalogue ref: INF 3/1421. The cartoon depicts determined (but subservient) looking German air force men flying towards…
Bonny Bonney
There’s been a few ‘Google doodles‘ featuring aviators to date, and a current one features Australian Aviatrix Lores Bonney. Maude Rose ‘Lores’ Bonney, (20 November 1897 – 24 February 1994) was the first woman to fly solo from Australia to England. The image is, in fact, animated, and the background to the story of the…
Plane Wallpaper
Another first today, original wallpaper Shared by Don Richardson on America in the 1940s Facebook group, this is a real insight to a really forgotten vernacular household style. Don stated: “We were repairing a water leak in our old house today and found this wallpaper way down deep!” The Statue of Liberty looks like a…
Pardo’s Push
Today we have a great example where an original commercial painting fulfils an important illustrative role of an event – not otherwise captured in the full colour movie and photo age of 1967. The Vietnam War. It required artist Ken Dallison in Esquire to bring the event to us in pictorial form. The story is…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 