For the last couple of days while I was unable to stay connected for more than a few minutes at a time, I decided to hang out with the Japanese twins, Dinah and Lily. Right now I have three variants of the Dinah done up in Illustrator, but only the II shaded. The Nick also has three versions ready for shading and I should be starting some other types next week once the new Internetmodeler.com is posted.

I find it fascinating how the JAAF used stylized numerals for many of their unit markings. The brown Dinah below is a perfect example, look closely and you can see the 1 and 7 in the tail markings. Eentually I'll have a nice collection to rival my WWI stuff - only 20 years to catch up to them, but at least it is faster to do multiples on the computer than to paint them by hand

S!~ Colslaw,

Those are very nice renderings. I admire the talent, and the disclipline it must take to earn a living as a freelance artist. I also find it interesting that your stuff can be found everywhere. You're practically famous, yet few know who you really are. They never put the signature with the name or callsign it seems.

To the rest of you, take note of the signature on the illustrations when you are reading books on aviation.

<S> Tiger,

Well, that went to my head

In 1994, at the first OTF seminar I attended - where I knew exactly nobody - I had all my initial watercolour profiles on display and it was fun to just stand back and watch everyone around them. Later I was talking to two guys and each of us thought the other two were old friends. In the end they turned into my original mentor as far as research and writing went - S K Taylor provided me with 500+ pages of documents that I used to write my history of NO.3 Wing RNAS as well as many photos, while Brad Gossen became my WWI travel companion for the next couple of years - at least until he got married. It was on one of our trips to Old Rhinbeck Aerodrome that we ran into a fellow walking around with photos of the models his company produced, John Marco and I then spent some time in the shade of a tree admiring each others work. Years later I worked with John on some of his model projects and then when I took up RB3D I met him once again as von Deutschmark. To date John is the only person I have actually met in person from RB or IL2 - which is funny as he is in Germany and I am in Canada.

The second OTF seminar I attended was to become the impetus to get published. Prior to that I was just doing the illustrations for myself, but after that I just had to share them with others. . so I contacted a couple of publishers I had been talking to previously and said that yes, now I was ready ... In that first year, I did three covers and two articles for OtF, followed by work for CCI and then Windsock, Flying Machines Press, Mushroom, Schiffer and recently a book on Flower Class Corvettes as a branch away from aircraft.

As much as I enjoyed doing the work on paper, it is also very rewarding to watch it evolve on the computer. So hopefully I will get a pile more done in the next couple of decades.

Bump for DillyDawg

S~
YOUR RN PEARSON?!?!! I fell in love with your renderings back in 2004, sitting in Mosul Iraq. My wife sent me some aviation mags, and one of em was "Over the Front" Man I feel like I am actually rubbing elbows with a true artist. You rock my man!!

Wow. .. After that there is no way that SNA and I could ever be in the same room. . both of our heads are far too big now

It is nice to see the work is appreciated. Send me your snail mail address and I'll send you one of the original v1 CDs which I can't sell in good conscience, but still have a few kicking around.

Actually, anyone here who wants one of the early ones can have one until I run out of them.