Some Flying Boat Artworks

perfect mate,

thank you:D

This is from the New Zealand National Archives Timeframes website

hi dave,

could you chuck in the original B/W photo of the gordan, would like it for my files:)

One good thing is you can keep on playing around with them later. For example I agree that this one does look a bit flat, despite that being a genuine Wigram sky behind it.

So I just had a fiddle and now the good old Canterbury southerly is blowing in over the Port Hills. A couple of areas have had their contrast and brightness tweeked as well, and now I think it looks a bit more realistic, hopefully.

The Gordon is gorgeous.

Yes I agree the earlier ones look a bit flat, I think this is down more to the quality of the photos I started with. The one of the Vildebeests was a quite poor photo to begin with in terms of sharpness and was also very “busy” in terms of the background and finding source material to put into it was difficult. It was a photo I was challenged to colour by another member of my forum, but the results are not too impressive. The one of those earlier four I am most happy with was the Avenger nose art as that came from a tiny photo, and came up better than I expected.

Not all photos take the colour well either, it’s a combination of skill, technique and shear luck to find one that works. So I’m amazed that so many of these flying boat ones turned out ok.

If you have a nice sharp b&w photo you want to challenge me with, particularly flying boats, I can give it a go.

I can’t believe that you managed to do such good quality work in such a short time. I must admit I haven’t had huge amounts of practice but it takes me hours to do anything remotely worthwhile with photoshop.
The admittedly rather jerky animation on my website home page took me 3 days and several attempts to get to its current state.
When I am feeling brave and patient again I will have another go and see if I can get Little Toni to fly more smoothly.

Thanks, Dave…..magnificent….particularly like the Sikorsky plus Empire shots….longshot
[QUOTE=Dave Homewood;1674074]Longshot, here is the original Sikorsky thread.

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=civil&action=display&thread=8301&page=1

Thanks, people usually add the word Bullsh*t in there somewhere. 🙂

The term I’m used to is p1ss artist and I hope this is taken the right way but there is clearly an improvement over the early work which looks a bit flat.

If anyone is wondering, by the way, Auckland Harbour does go various shades of emerald green like the above when it is cloudy, and blue when the sun is out and no clouds around.

You, sir, are an artist.

Thanks, people usually add the word Bullsh*t in there somewhere. 🙂

Here are a few older ones I have done in the past, not quite so good. A colourised wartime black and white photo of nose art on a No. 30 Squadron RNZAF Avenger

A Fairey Gordon advanced trainer of No. 2 Service Flying Training School, RNZAF Station Wigram, Christchurch, NZ

A visitor to RNZAF Station Whenuapai, Auckland, in 1945

Vildebeests over Auckland

Longshot, here is the original Sikorsky thread.

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=civil&action=display&thread=8301&page=1

Thanks for the comments. A variety of techniques are used, and it takes a lot of practise and often a bit of fluffing about to get looking right. The key when starting out is the original scan must be really sharp and crisp, soft photos are pretty much impossible to get right. These ones took around 45 minutes to an hour to do each, apart from the last one (the dusk one with all the harbour lights) as I had lots of playing around, hunting for source photos and getting the look I wanted, as it was not based on any actual photo but just from an idea I had, and I think in total it took about 3 hours or so. I was pleased how it turned out, it looks just like I had hoped, though in reality the Clipper would be almost black in sillouette so it looks a little unnatural. One thing that pleased me the most on that was when I added the layer with the hills behind with the Auckland Museum prominent on the hill line (taken from a real photo on one of the threads) and darkened it down, the old b&w photo looked perfect as the sillouetted hills. I then added a few house lights to the hills and it came alive.

You, sir, are an artist.

I’ve seen a fair bit of colouring but normally it is just flat colours, not the variation of hues that you’ve used to make it look a lot more convincing, good work, how long did each one take?

Very interesting photos and colourisation….could you post a link to the Sikorsky photos which preceded them…

It makes me sick with envy when I see what some people can do with photoshop. Me, I can’t even obliterate registration marks, on the ‘wot plane’ thread, without it looking as if I’ve done so with a pot of Dulux!

Nice photos grateful for you posting them