South African Air Force Avro Shackleton

 Whilst spending time at home doing a daily drawing of the human form out of my head, my other art class once a week was spent working on an oil painting of the South African Air force Avro Shackleton.

The work is based on a photograph of the machine that I took several years ago at an air show here in Cape Town. I used the image to develop a drawing – tonal study – of the aircraft.

Avro Shackleton A3 pencil drawing

After figuring out the tonal range of the image, I repeated the exercise in watercolour. This created a lovely tranquil looking image of the aircraft.

Avro Shackleton A3 watercolour

Up to this point the image was not particularly adventurous, in fact it was little more than the recreation of a photograph in different media. Something that computer packages purport to be able to do these days! I wanted to go for something a little different in the oil painting.

My first idea was to place the aircraft over the sea with a drifting rubber dingy of small lifeboat in the water, thus depicting the aircraft in the air sea rescue role. I looked at some paintings of seascapes with small boats in them and found one by JMW Turner. I used some of its background to create a mock up of what a painting might look like.

Avro Shackleton rough with lifeboat - A4 watercolour

The mock presence of the boat created some issues with composition and perspective which was a distraction from the main point of the image, the aircraft. So I tried again without the boat and more defined storm clouds.

Avro Shackleton - A4 watercolour rough

Then I looked at one of Turners most iconic painting, the ‘Fighting Temeraire’, and in particular the sky behind it. I began to wonder how Turner would approach and paint this aircraft. Another rough watercolour followed. This proved more acceptable so I used it as the starting point of the painting and created the first glaze of the painting on the canvas board.

Avro Shackleton final watercolour and first oil glaze

As the painting developed the sky went through a number of iterations such as the one below. Here the suggestion of a horizon can be seen in part of the image.

Avro Shackleton Oil glaze - intermediate stage 

I decided to enhance the horizon suggestion without making it too explicit, the idea is to leave the background to the viewers imagination whilst the foreground (aircraft) is realistic and explicit.

Avro Shackleton Final oil painting - 20 inch x 30 inch

I hope you like the final result.