Tutorials - Acrylic Painting of an Aircraft

This is where I will be introducing you to the techniques I use to do my art drawings or paintings and hopefully teach you in some way what I know. I am by no means an art teacher so forgive me if I am not following the norm. I specifically will be focusing on my way of doing things within the budget that I operate in at this stage. This is by no means a professional representation at this stage. So, if you are interested in my art and the way I do it, read on and enjoy....

Project: Cessna 210 Centurion, Commissioned artwork

1) The Setup and Preparation:

I started by printing out an enlarged photo of the aircraft that I was asked to paint via my sister for a customer. The reason for making it large was because I was under pressure to finish it quickly. Since I am working full-time and I only had two weeks to finish it! So my schedule was hectic and I worked non-stop every night for two weeks, but finished it in time.

Ok, back to the art. This is what my printout (and original picture) looked like. This is basically the size of 3 A4 pages taped together.

Original Photo

I used a stretched canvas to do the painting on. Once the three pages of the photo was taped together to form the original photo, I turned it upside-down and used a light brown Pitt Pastel pencil to make quick strokes on the backside all over the aircraft shape until the whole aircraft shape was covered. Then I turned it right-side around again and taped it to the canvas in the position I wanted the plane to be with a few pieces of masking tape. I then used the Pitt Pastel again to draw the important lines of the aircraft, and by doing so I was using a simple tracing method of getting a quick sketch of the aircraft onto the canvas. Remember, I had little time to finish the painting. After I had drawn all the lines I wanted I removed the photo print from the canvas to start the painting process.

2) Initial painting - The foundation:

I used Acrylic Paint (Reeves) to do this painting because I needed to finish quickly. The acrylic paint allows for quick drying. Below you can see the light brown lines  I created with the tracing method. This gave me a quick guide to start painting.

 

I started painting a mix of white and light yellow and brown to give the aircraft body the effect of the early morning sunlight on the white body of the aircraft.

I finished the propeller first, then started working my way backwards. You can see the yellow tint within the white. This was my base color for the body of the aircraft as shown in the picture below.

3) Starting to get the colors right:

Next step was to start adding more white to the areas as necessary to get the correct color for the aircraft as close as possible to the original photo. 

I also started to add the interior details at this stage using smaller brushes to enable the detailed lines of the this part. Here I took a careful look at what the colors on the photo was to get it right in the painting. You will also notice that I added some light blue to the top part of the aircraft and the windscreen to give the proper effect of the reflective light on the aircraft.

3) Adding some shading

Adding shading is very important as this gives the impression of where the light sources come from and because the wings of this aircraft are high it has an obvious shadow on the body below the wing section. I simply added a mixture of white and gray (using black and white as the main mixture of paint) to achieve this effect. By adjusting the amount of black or white you add you can control the lightness or darkness of the shades.

I also shaded the bottom part of the wing and added the "mirror-effect" of the windows that shine against the wing. Then I added the first coat of paint on the wheels section.

4) Finishing touches on the aircraft body:

 As you can see above I completed the aircraft's body by finishing the wheels section, adding the aircraft striping areas and registration, and also some fine details like rivets on the body and chrome sections on the front of the wings. A mixture of white, blue and black can be used to obtain the chrome like look. 

Following is some shots of a few detailed areas on the aircraft to give you an idea of how closely I approach this.

5) Adding the background and final touches:

This is where I decided to change the ugly background (the hangers) of the photo to something more appealing to the eye and to enhance the the shadow effect on the ground on the aircraft as well as the aircraft itself. The main idea was to let the aircraft stand out in the painting.

So I started adding the background, first by using a large brush and then gradually working closer to the aircraft body shape. This is where you need to take care not to have your background overlap over any area of the aircraft body sections. See picture below that shows one stage of creating the background.

I then added the sky section and final touches. A lot of blending was used during this final stages to create the effect I wanted for the background. Below is the final result!

Final Result