Customer Reviews

How to Draw Aircraft Like a Pro

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"How to Draw Aircraft Like a Pro"

Looking for a primer on aviation art? Then this is your book!

"How to Draw Aircraft Like a Pro" fills a huge gap in the literature of art instruction by comprehensively addressing aviation fine art.

Frank Wootton published "How to Draw Planes" in 1941. Jim Dunavent wrote "How to Draw Airplanes" in 1973. Both of these books were nice efforts in their day, and have become collectable classics in their own right. Even if they were still in print, they would come far short of addressing the nuances of aviation art as comprehensively as does this new 2001 book.

To be sure, the necessities for producing fine art - composition, perspective, light and shadow, hue, value, intensity and so on, are independent of the subject matter. However, in practice, many people are drawn into the field of aviation art by dint of their passion for flight, rather than an overwhelming passion for art. This book was created to asist and encourage them.

Established fine artists who don't need the art basics may still find the engineering and aeronautical insights of this book helpful. Consumers of aviation art are among the most demanding and detail driven to be found anywhere. To the "rivet-counters," fine art is also accurate and believable. There is no quarter given under the guise of "artistic license". The painting had better be right in every aspect of the story it is representing.

The title itself is a good for getting the right people to pick it up and crack the cover. In truth, the book delivers far more than it promises, especially if you have the two books mentioned earlier. Drawing is the the crucial requisite skill for competant aviation art. It is the skill mentioned first by every master aviation artist who is queried on where to start. It is the also the skill most frequently neglected by the novice, who hopes in vain to shortcut the process by copying a photograph. The text hammers away on the basics of drawing, but also does get into the techniques for how to PAINT aircraft like a pro.

The book is comprehensive and affordable. I found myself wishing for much larger reproductions of the excellent artwork, and for a hard cover in the interest of durability, otherwise I'd have extended a fifth star to the rating.

"How to Draw Aircraft Like a Pro" represents the cumulative lessons-learned of the first great generation of aviation artists, those who have brought aviation art its long deferred recognition as bona fide "fine art". An aspiring aviation artist could spend years of painting and enduring professional critiques at ASAA Forums to uncover the popular pitfalls of composition and execution one at a time- or they could avail themselves of the collected wisdom in this book.

In summary, this book fills a huge gap in the literature. The artists and the authors did a very credible job of bringing together a huge amount of material on a complex subject.

And they did it just in time for helping to Celebrate the Centennial of Flight 1903-2003. What could be better?

Interested in aviation art?
Buy this book,
join the American Society of Aviation Artists,
and grab a pencil...

Oh-by-the-way:
In response to the question from the earlier reviewer--
Yes, the "Kate" on page 71 etc is actually a fixed gear Mitsubishi Ki-51 "Sonia". The Nakajima B5N2 "Kate" is correctly represented, with its gear retracted, on pages 122-123. Same ocean, same war, different branch of service.
Remember what I said about "rivet-counters"?

The book covers a lot of basic art fundementals, from media, sketching, values, shading, color, composition etc. There are plenty of excellent examples of finished drawings/paintings of aircraft with pitfalls to avoid. So why the but? Well, to me the key to drawing an airplane correctly starts with the ability to assure proper relative alignment and sizing of the aircraft's structures. The use of descriptive geometry to achieve this is covered in very, very, very basic terms (about 2 pages) with the example shown being a line drawing of an aircraft with all square surfaces. It would have been much more helpful to have an example of an actual aircraft drawn this way in all it's various stages. So, my suggestion, should you ever revise the book, is to drop all the basic art fundementals and get into the meat of descriptive geometry. What tools are needed, handy shortcuts, etc.

Oh, and by the way, what is the plane identified on pages 71, 120 & 121 as a "Kate"? It appears to be a Ki-51, but I could be mistaken.

This covers everything you need to take on your big notion of becoming an aviation artist. It will also serve you well for an understanding or perspective of objects in space, and to make the good compositional decisions. It was very inexpensive, and I was very surprised and pleased with what I got for so little. Now, to become rich and famous from my aviation art.