Today’s Poster. We are all familiar today with the organisation the United Nations. What’s less well known is the name dates back to the stage of World War Two when the Axis powers had united many of the rest of the world against them. From Wiki: “On New Year’s Day 1942, the Allied “Big Four”…
Tag: Art
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…
Adams’ Prang
Australian official war artist Dennis Adams was in a Short Stirling heavy bomber that crashed (‘prang’ in the vernacular of the time) on 16-17 July 1944. He survived (two of the crew didn’t) and is seen here examining the inverted nose of the bomber a week afterwards. Adams head and left leg were injured, and…
Rare Egyptian Camel
Yes, not the humped quadruped, but a Camel from Sopwith. Or in this case, from the sub contracted manufacturer Ruston. The ‘Scarf & Goggles’ blog says: “The completion of Ruston’s 1000th Camel was felt to warrant some celebration, with the result that this aircraft, serial number B7380, was delivered on 25 January 1918 wearing an…
Magazine Fuel
Today, two covers from the Air BP trade journal, thanks to my artist colleague Ian Bott, who said in 2016: “Picked these up at Duxford yesterday: beautifully-designed, inventive and effortlessly-cool BP in-house trade magazines from, I assume, the 1960s. Those must have been the days for a graphic designer.” As well as the straight ‘art’…
Return of the Imperial
Here’s a pair and a quintet, with a lesson for those doing this job – check every copy found, in books and online. Several of the well known, even famous posters we’ve seen here exist in variant forms – sometimes with different text, sometimes with different backgrounds – or more, as we shall see. It’s…
Hardy Coton Vimy
Today we have a pair of artworks on the Vickers Vimy, an aircraft type designed for the Great War, but made a name as a record setter worldwide. The first image is by the late, great aviation artist Wilf Hardy, a particular favourite painter of myself and my Aeroplane Monthly colleague Ian Bott. A 450mm…
Bay Window
Today’s artwork is an evidently quick drawing from his sketchbook by Australian official war artist Eric Thake aboard a Consolidated Catalina, depicting a crewman on lookout in the portside gun blister. I was looking for other Thake artworks*, but this one jumped out at me as an exceptional work as a sketch. In a National…
Bomber Blackened Sky
A remarkable print today, thanks to regular correspondent Gregory Alegi. A very evocative, dark (literally and figuratively) image of Caproni Ca.3 trimotor bombers approaching an industrial centre. So dense are they they’ve achieved the cliche of ‘turning the sky black’. Initially, due to the use of the black block I thought it was a woodcut,…
Dutch Diana
A fascinating story here. Decorative art on aircraft (usually called ‘nose art’, though for obvious reasons not quite appropriate here) is nothing unusual, but the story behind this, current scheme is, I think, unique. Plenty of art has been copied, or created for a unit by all sorts of people from unit personnel to Disney…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 