Aviation Art

Another first this month was painting some aviation art on a grand scale. The concept was to paint an aviation piece in a pop art style, using a minimum amount of colours and to add dynamism to the work. The other new concept (to me) was to paint BIG and in this case a canvas over 1 metre in width was used. The largest painting I had completed before was only 22 inches wide. What better subject to choose than the new Typhoon fighter aircraft of the RAF, with its sleek lines and extreme power. Painting on this size was a great challenge and acrylics were chosen as it would be impossible to produce evenness of tone with watercolours on this scale. Also, a great property of acrylics is that any mistakes can be painted over, whereas with watercolour you may as well tear the work up and start again. For example, I thought I had made a great mistake having dropped a brush loaded with black paint onto an area of sky but fortunately this disappeared with a coat or two of blue. I was really pleased with the result and think there is more to come from this subject. Watch this space!