I start off with a cylinder primitive. My line drawings are all lined up, ready to go.

Front view of the 12-sided cylinder setup

I changed the color to green so that I can see it easily

Slicing and dicing. I'm cutting the fuselage at places logical for bulkheads to be.

Starting to shape the fuselage with the top view. I later work in symmetry.

Shaping the fuselage side

I chose the Ryan Recruit due to it's easier fuselage design

Starting to hollow out the cockpits

got the aircraft in a hyperNURBS and pushing and pulling verticies to get it just right.

Very rough, basic render to check for basic shaping

Slicing up the rudder from the vertical stab and the elevators from the horizontal stabs. Also cutting out the elevator trim tabs, flaps and ailerons.

I used a spline and circle nestled inside a sweep to produce the cockpit coaming

two cockpit edges done

super basic materials test

Checking the normals

reference photo for the Kinner R-540, 160 hp engine that I'll be modeling.

starting with some basic primitives and trying to keep the poly count to a medium detail level. Not too much and not too little.

I'm really just eyballing it from here, using several photos of the engine which wasn't too easy to find photos of.

Exhaust pipe

I created a black metallic material that seemed to go well with the engine.

spark plugs and their wires

spark plugs and wire detail

Texture test of the engine cylinder plus braided wires and a tarnished exhaust pipe.

another angle of a single engine cylinder. I'll create instances of this that will be positioned in a rotary method around the propeller.

Another angle of the cylinder. I'm not trying to get super detailed, just enough for my means

Basic materials on the fuselage and wings, tires, etc...

oil cooler vent

Created some markings

rendering with an aerial backdrop

completed (well sort of) Ryan PT-22 Recruit. This was used as a reference for my oil painting (another progress I'll show soon). Pilots and other small details as well as the sky was painted in photoshop.