Painting a Grand Adventure - Part 1

I am excited to share a new adventure for me, the start of a painting of a different subject, General Aviation. It actually started three years ago in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Back in 2023, my son bought a Gillow's kit of a DHC-2 Beaver (with wheels) and I was inspired to start conceptualizing a painting of a DHC-2 Beaver. I love the lines of the DHC-2 design so I wanted to draw and paint it.

I admit that I don't get the chance to paint civilian aviation as I ought. I mostly stick with military aviation as that is my heritage. I served as a USAF crew chief on KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft and I have family members who have served long with the military and along with the military as well. I love painting and drawing military subjects! Yet every once and a while it would be a nice change to be able to draw and paint civilian subjects and I would like to do this more.

Watch Part 1 of my painting in action below:

My son's Guillow's kit in progress.

My son's Guillow's kit in progress.

My son's Guillow's kit in progress.

The first thing I did was to take his unfinished balsa model and use it as a guide for a few concept sketches. I love to use models to aid me in understanding the basic structure of whatever I am drawing or painting.

Creating a small "thumbnail" sketch of the basic idea for my painting

DHC-2 Beaver rough-draft thumbnail sketch

After this first thumbnail sketch was produced, I really loved the idea, so I didn't really bother creating others, I felt it was good to move ahead with a larger concept drawing.

Larger concept sketch in progress

Completed concept drawing

Concept drawing dedicated to my son

The next thing to do was to take this sketch into my digital painting program (I use either Rebelle or ArtRage) and create a digital color study. The following images show my progression on my digital color study in Rebelle.

Bringing my pencil concept sketch into Rebelle as reference.

I then work on another layer to produce a digital outline tracing and start on some of the colors starting from the top with the sky. Working top to bottom.

Using my sketch and outline as reference, I start to fill the background mountains and trees.

The background of this color study is complete, and now to finish the colors of the plane.

Completed digital color study from my pencil composition.

So there's the final digital color study working from my pencil composition. In the next Parts II and onward, I will show my progress on the 40" x 30" acrylic painting.