In talking with Keith Ferris at the 2007 American Society of
Aviation Artists forum in Baltimore, I was asking him for solutions to life,
the universe and how to paint aviation art. Keith, who I sense has been asked
that question more times than I’ve stopped and watched an aircraft fly over,
answered by telling me that I need to consider the issue, understand the
problem and then solve it myself. At the time I was pretty miffed that Keith
was not giving away his hard earned knowledge to a mere upstart who had only
been painting aviation art for a year or so at this time. However after a
little reflection I understood how important a lesson that Keith imparted that
day.
As a result I now give a lot of thought to the components of
a picture in the planning stage with the aim to solve as many problems as I can
before I start to paint. And so here are a few thoughts on the impact and issues the
horizon might have on a painting.
Horizon according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary is
defined as “ the line at which the earth and sky appear to meet”. OK so you
don’t need the Oxford English Dictionary or me to tell you this!
What else do we know about the horizon ? Well to tell you
the truth I’d never really thought about it until I started painting aviation
art.
A few basic rules of perspective immediately come to mind
but perhaps more interestingly from the aviation artist’s point of view is the
relationship between the distance to the horizon and the height above ground
level from which it is seen.
The distance to
the horizon (in miles) is the square root of 1.5 times the height above ground
or sea level (in feet) of the eye of the observer.
Now imagine we
are flying over Berlin in a B-17 on the 6th March 1944 and Berlin, the target, is clear
of all clouds. Normal bombing height for a B-17 raid was 26-28000 ft. From that
height the distance to the horizon is 217-225 miles. At the lower height of 16500
ft from which bombs were sometimes dropped the horizon is still 172 miles
distant.
And so one of the challenges of aviation art is dealing with
distances that have to be portrayed when aircraft are depicted at altitude. Given
the distance to the horizon at 20000 feet is around 200 miles this must be
taken into account if the composition of a picture includes the horizon. The
main task is to identify any key landmarks such as a coastline, large towns or
cities or mountain ranges that might be visible, and their position and size
within the picture. At the same time the effect of atmospheric recession must
be taken into account and it fully understood that cloud and atmospheric conditions
most likely will reduce the distant horizon to a blue/grey band of indistinct detail.
However somewhere between the viewpoint and the horizon a level of ground
detail will need to be shown, and at the very least make some attempt to accurately
reflect the geography of the
Atmospheric recession – well that’s for next time.
R for Roger 9"x6"
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