Turning Point Midway

Turning Point Midway - Revised Version, by Ron Cole

So, sometimes this happens: A client will say over the course of months that they want one thing, and then as soon as a painting is completed that one thing will become something different. Sometimes that happens days before a deadline. Sometimes hours. But that's part of being a professional and I don't get annoyed over it at all. It's a new challenge to overcome, and when I pull it off I might use the exercise to justify a new Blog post.

In this case I was commissioned to paint the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi during the Battle of Midway. There were few specifics imparted to me besides this: Show it right before it sank and show "tragedy". This was for a Japanese client I'd worked with many times before and the language barrier necessitated our keeping communications simple. I explained that Akagi was actually scuttled near dawn on the day after she was bombed, when it was feared she might fall into the hands of the US Navy. Up to that point, because her damage was mostly limited to above her waterline, it was hoped that Akagi might be towed back to Japan. Thus I suggested showing the carrier late in the day of the American attack, as she quietly burned, her aircraft circling before ditching and her remaining crew gathering forward on the anchor deck. It hadn't been done before, and with the benefit of new research I could show the scene with unprecedented accuracy: a far distant sister ship (it was believed to have been the carrier Kaga) burning on the horizon, Akagi's decks clear of aircraft. A haunting and, from the standpoint of any seaman irrespective of nationality, sad scene of tragedy.

The Original Details of Ron Cole' Turning Point Midway

I liked it, but I don't work for me! My client wanted more action. I pointed out that depicting Akagi 'before sinking' and yet also while under attack was to depict two different events that were many hours apart. I was also arguably past deadline; he needed the painting in Tokyo, and a yet un-started Pearl Harbor piece, by the end of July. It was then the 23rd!

Those are the times when I pop an emergency Ativan (Please don't judge. I live a stressful life at times), sit back in my chair, and stare at a piece once finished that had suddenly digressed.

The revisions were many. I had to get the ship moving. That meant all of my port side reflections would change. I'd lose the crew. They were Japanese. No one would have been thinking of jumping ship at that point. All of the Zero fighters would have been in the distance, as they'd been drawn away from the carrier by the previous torpedo bomber attack. Obviously I had to add some American SBD Dauntless dive bombers. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be striking - no pun intended.

Details of Akagi amidships. The carrier was directly struck by only one American bomb, but its detonation in the hangar deck was enough to start uncontrollable fires that doomed the ship over the ensuing hours.  

After a few hours of uninterrupted painting: Mission accomplished.

It's interesting to me that the Japanese don't shirk from acknowledging their defeats - at least in my experience. I'd previously painted the bombing of Hiroshima for a Japanese client who specifically told me that he wanted to show the shock waves destroying the city. As an American I can only imagine wanting a painting of 9/11, which I certainly would not want. Yet there seems to be an agenda in Japan that runs deep when it comes to remembering these tragic events - be it the enshrinement of national sacrifice or statements about war in general. All of these pieces of mine are on permanent display in a Tokyo museum. I hope that they serve their intended purpose well.

Ron Cole
 

Aviation Art: Painting Zeros, by Ron Cole

My painting of two A6M3 Model 32 Zeros of the 252nd Kokutai being led home by searchlights. The Japanese usually removed the radios from their aircraft to save weight, and their Pacific island bases were often hundreds of miles apart.

Everybody has a favorite airplane. It might be 'that big one' that took you to Key West two years ago - but that's still a favorite. For me it's a Japanese Word War II fighter: the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It has been my favorite since I was a little kid. Why, is probably an amalgam of various theories: I'm genetically built like a Zero: thin, light and maneuverable. The Japanese were the underdogs of World War II, as was I, at least in grade school, for the aforementioned reason (I was skinny). My favorite book as a kid was a biography of a Zero fighter Pilot - the great 'Ace' Saburo Sakai. I know. Why be a conformist?

As a forty-something year-old professional aviation artist, I paint the airplanes I get paid to paint, or focus upon the popular subjects that will sell the most limited edition prints. But when I have time I go out of my way to paint the Zero. Objectively, it's a pretty airplane; graceful and elegant with lots of French curves. As a machine, it was extremely well designed and meticulously manufactured; like a Swiss watch. Even under the stress of war, each Zero was hand built and polished to a high sheen like a race car. Like all of their weapons of war, from the Samurai sword to their battleships - the Japanese knew how to make them well. Now they just do it with cars.

The Zero fighter is not completely extinct today, though it is one of the rarest of all World War II aircraft. Only one is flying in the world that is mostly original. The few others utilize mostly new components and American-made engines (the original Nakajima-built radials are too rare and parts are impossible to find). Of the few survivors, all suffer from some kind of fault that makes them less than perfectly authentic. I've seen it as my job to bring the 'original' Zero fighter back to life; not only in terms of its accurate portrayal in every detail and color, but also in its authentic wartime surroundings.

My painting of an A6M3 Model 32 Zero during the interception of Louis Zamperini's B-24 'Super Man' in 1943. I detailed this aircraft accurately down to the correct flat head screws and tiny red alignment marks.  

My painting of an A6M5 Model 52 Zero defending Iwo Jima during pre-invasion attack by US Navy F6F Hellcats. 

 

My first ever Zero painting: A6M5s of the 262st Kokutai leave Iwo Jima under the cover of darkness on their way to Saipan.

I was lucky to be commissioned to paint several Zero compositions by Legend Flyers of Washington between 2013 and 2015. They were restoring an A6M3 model that had been brought over from the Pacific island of Taroa by my friend John Sterling in 1992. The aircraft was too deteriorated to make airworthy on its own, but the shop was building most of it from scratch using the original parts as templates (few factory drawings remain of the aircraft). Even though roughly six million dollars had already been invested in the project (or maybe because of that), they were short of money. They wanted to trade me original Zero parts for artwork. I certainly jumped at that amazing opportunity!

Some of the A6M3 Zero parts obtained in trade from Legend Flyers in exchange for my artwork.

One of my later paintings for Legend Flyers of their A6M3 Zero that they are restoring to flying condition.

Another Zero painting for Legend Flyers: This is the same aircraft depicted above, but as she appeared in late 1943. Earlier that year, the Japanese Navy issued an order for all of their aircraft to be camouflaged by their units in the field.

Ron Cole's Big 40x60 Gallery-Wrapped Canvases

The genre' of aviation art is changing dramatically. In my personal opinion it's all for the better. New technologies are opening up new processes that are empowering more artists to share their visions with others. That can only be good. And what fans of our art expect from us is changing, too. Realism, drama, mood and the size of a composition are seeing limits pushed to the edge of what's possible. That's exciting, and challenging as an artist. All good. 

I've always been seen as a bit 'nuts' when it has come to including arguably unnecessary detail in my own creations. I did it as a builder of scale models and it's equally true of my paintings. Can anyone really see the pattern of the dress the woman is wearing inside the open door of my Boeing 314 Clipper? Certainly not when being viewed as a 13x19 or even 24x36 Giclee' print; certainly not on any computer screen short of full-resolution with a zoom feature. But it is there, though rarely appreciated. Details like that are within every one of my 100+ compositions. They're time consuming to include, but they're part of my style. 

It recently became in vogue to make huge prints and wall art a part of modern home decor. Everyone has seen the big online 'art' clearinghouses advertise them. But no photography and virtually no art was ever created with sizes like these in mind. Look at them closely in person, as opposed to those tiny ad images on Facebook, and there is fuzzy pixelation everywhere! They're terrible. And the companies that sell such junk don't care, since by the time it's obvious you've already bought it and unpacked it. 

Only the size is impressive when a composition, meant to be printed as a 20x30, is blown up to twice that size. 

Fortunately, at least in this particular case, I'm nuts. I've always exceeded the need when it came to sharpness and detail. What was probably a waste of time in years past is now a great asset and presents an opportunity. Now there is a popular and usually practical size that I can offer people that really shows off my work and sets it apart from anything else out there on the market: the 40x60 inch gallery-wrapped canvas. 

The rivet detail on my Amelia Earhart Lockheed Electra really pops when seen as a 40x60 

Unlike all of my other offerings that I produce in my own studio, these 40x60s are outsourced to an incredibly reliable and quick-to-ship company that specializes in these pieces. That makes them expensive for me to have made, but I'm happy to make less myself in order to share my work this way. The canvas is gloss, and somewhat to my surprise it creates a beautiful depth to the image - especially with saturated colors. The canvas is wrapped around an extra-thick and solid wooden frame. The thickness of the frame creates a natural stand-off from the wall, giving the piece a three-dimensional look. The edging of the wrap is gloss black, which amplifies that effect even more.

These days folks are much less inclined to want to buy art, wait to receive it, then take it to a framer, pay more money for wrapping or matting, then wait more, and finally receive something that they can hang on their wall. My 40x60s (and indeed all of my work in all of the sizes I offer) come ready to hang with a variety of hardware to accommodate anyone's needs. Take them out of the (admittedly big) box and hang them. That's it. Instant gratification! 

 

All of my 100+ compositions are still available in this size, though a few of my most popular pieces are close to sold out. 

Shop my store, or just enjoy taking a look at what I have to offer: Cole's Aircraft

- Ron Cole 

Ron Cole's All Time Best Sellers

PAA Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper, Aviation Art Print
by Ron Cole

My classic 314 remains my all-time best seller among over 150 aviation art compositions that I've painted in recent years. There seems to be something about it; a nostalgia and a mood. Everyone has a place in their heart for this period of pre-war history and innovation. I've been told I captured both in this piece. Originally a commission, it led to a series of classic PAA airliners and a full calendar for the Pan American Airlines Historical Foundation in 2015.

P-51D Mustang & Messerschmitt Me 262, WWII Aircraft Relic Display
by Ron Cole

I'm probably best known for my unique WWII aircraft relic displays that combine my artwork with pieces of aluminum skin from the historic combat aircraft depicted in my paintings. The parts I include come from all over the world; from archaeological digs in Europe to restoration shops and museums. I don't acquire pieces unless their history is documented. All of this is blended together in wall-hanging displays that I sign and number. Each is unique. My 'Axis & Allied' 13x19 display combines two famous aerial opponents: the Me 262 jet fighter and the P-51 Mustang. I've released over 40 different series of displays covering all theaters and most aircraft types of World War II.

Visit Ron Cole's Online Store

SHOP NOW: Cole's Aircraft Online Store

P-51 Mustang 'In All its Glory' Painting, by Ron Cole

I love painting obscure historical subjects. As a professional artist, that can be a real vice. Anyone familiar with this aircraft from the early 1930s?

Yes! It's the vaunted Mitsubishi Type 10 giant carrier-based triplane torpedo bomber. The Japanese built a few of them in concert with Sopwith before realizing it was too big to operate from aircraft carriers. It's weird and ugly. I love it. I painted it. I've never sold a print. 

Thankfully, from a business point of view, I also love painting beautiful things. Somewhere along the line, after having painted over 100 compositions in 8 years, I realized that I'd never covered the most popular and historically significant subject within my genre' - the P-51D Mustang. It was hard to work it into my busy schedule between commissions, but I wanted to do it and do it right; with an unusual attention to detail. From the start I knew I wanted to focus on the natural beauty of the machine, without being distracted by unit markings and fancy nose art, so it would be a 'naked' bird as it would have appeared fresh from the factory in 1944, and with a bit more reflectivity across its aluminum skin than would have been common in reality (Maybe someone at North American had some time on their hands, and polishing compound). Put her in a beautiful environment and let it bounce off of her elegant lines. 

And that's what I did. 

  

I think it's wonderful that these aircraft were hastily built under pressure. They're imperfect. Too often artists paint them (and scale modelers construct them) displaying Swiss-watch-like precision. Panel lines wavered. Sheet metal wrinkled. Rivets didn't line up. And all of those quirks are magnified when everything is polished. It's also harder to render an imperfect surface than it is to pretend all was smooth and uniform. How do I get it right when I do get it right? By studying the real thing and photographs of the real thing. A fastener distorts the metal surrounding it in a very specific and predictable way. Two rivets close together will effect each other while two more distant rivets won't. For me it helps to have pieces of these aircraft lying around - but you get the idea. 90% of the process is observation. The remainder is painting what you saw.  

   

Having converted this composition into the digital realm, and since this aircraft was rendered without unit markings, I saw an opportunity to create variations based upon the original work. Very often I get requests for specific aircraft flown by specific pilots, or aircraft belonging to certain units. I can't always accommodate those requests, but I could here. Here are a few that have been born recently:

I hope you enjoy my work! Limited edition prints and open edition posters are still available for some of these renditions. Visit my web store: Cole's Aircraft

- Ron Cole

Painting Hiroshima, by Ron Cole

He said he wanted to see the destruction of the city; the shock wave moving out from ground zero, with buildings and homes in front of it and pulverized ruins behind. Seriously? I thought to myself, How can I undertake this commission? 

I'm not overly sensitive regarding violence and I'm not partisan nor political about my art, but I've always seen my art as a celebration on some level. When I do paint war - and lets face it, I end up painting war a lot in my genre' - I avoid the most potentially disturbing moments and try to focus more upon the machines and the men; a mood and a nostalgia. Many veterans over the years have remarked that they like my work for that very reason. In the past I enjoyed the support of many World War II veterans who chose to autograph my work after they'd rejected offers from other artist to do the same for them. I've always felt that painting for these men, as their generation passes away, keeps their spirits alive for ensuing generations. That's celebratory.  

When Japanese billionaire industrialist Nobuo Harada's representative first approached me about the project, I was rather shocked. It was my second commissioned piece for him, and ultimately his museum in Tokyo. When Nobuo-san directly told me what he wanted to see, the challenge of it was enough to plague me. There was no way to celebrate that moment. A person can be abstract about it and think of it as an end to an even more brutal war; it ultimately saved millions of lives and so on. But a painting is a still snapshot that doesn't reveal context like that. I'd have to paint the deaths of 100,000 people and have it say something at face value.

Harada was very specific regarding the composition. I didn't have much to say about it. The focus was to be the mushroom cloud with the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, as a secondary element. Right away I searched to see how other artists had depicted it in history. Short answer: with subtlety or outright omission. Some artists only depicted the aircraft. Others painted a mushroom cloud in the far distance, the city tactfully obscured by overcast. One painter created two versions of the same painting, one with the mushroom cloud and one without. Clever. Options that I did not have. At least I knew I wasn't alone in my conflict regarding the subject. Then I made a choice that I felt, once I'd made it, was the only thing that should be done: 

Reveal the horror. Let that stand on its own. Don't even try to gloss it over. Doing so would be the greatest injustice. 

The base of the mushroom cloud - the city of Hiroshima - is in full view as Nobuo-san specified. After having read everything I could find on the behavior of the bomb as it detonated and impacted the surrounding area, I wasn't able to both depict the cloud and the shock waves (there were two: one from the blast and the other from the wave hitting the ground and bouncing back). I rendered the smoke and fire at the base of the cloud with a specific word in mind: Sickly. The color of the cloud briefly went through a 'reddish' phase as it rose into the air. Combining that with the yellow-orange from the fires created that 'look'. And it is scientifically accurate. The crew of the Enola Gay described the low smoke over the city as 'bubbling', which I've portrayed here as well. 

Nothing celebratory in any of it - but that's the entire point. 

Nobuo Harada was very pleased with the piece, and it is currently on display alongside the previous works I've created for him. Hundreds of Japanese see it every day. I don't know what their reactions are to it, but I think that I did the subject fair justice. No politics. Just . . . it. 

I don't advertise this painting in any of my stores (it's available only by special order). 

I do invite my readers to visit my web store, however. I have over 150 other compositions available:

ColesAircraft.com  

    

- Ron Cole

  5/17/1016     

 

 

   

Ron Cole's Warbird Relic Displays: Origins and FAQ

The simple question has always been: how to breath old history into new artwork. The aviation art genre' is about history and its preservation within the paintings that we, as the artists, create. But no matter how beautiful and accurate our works - they are still new paint, new inks, new papers and new frames, ultimately hung upon new walls by people who seek to connect with the past. By themselves that can only go so far.

Since not long after World War II, a new hobby arose among people with an interest in the history of that conflict and who lived in the areas most afflicted by it. In Europe it became popular to search for wartime aircraft crash sites. Armed with metal detectors, loss reports, and sometimes eye-witness accounts, these new archaeologists set out into areas that were sometimes as accessible as their own backyards, or as remote as the middle of Ukraine swampland. And they came home, usually, with buckets of metal. Real history. In many cases it was then a matter of detective work; finding serial numbers, connecting the aircraft with its crew, its unit, the day and circumstances of its loss - usually in combat. Amazing pictures of these historical moments were formulated in that way, but the buckets of metal typically sat in sheds, unable to really speak for themselves.
   

Who has heard the cliche', If these things could only talk? Another cliche' comes to mind, Show don't tell. My artwork showed a story. The pieces of metal represented real and amazing history that people could physically touch. By bringing all of these elements together with my artwork I felt that I could create things that were very special, unique, and make them available to virtually anyone. I wouldn't price them too high (Some for as low as $50). I'd use modern and user-friendly online store environments to sell them: https://coles-aircraft.myshopify.com.

Perfect!

I released my first 'relic displays' in 2008. Since then I've offered more than 60 different displays that collectively chronicle all theaters and most aircraft types. More recently I've moved into more modern subjects as well, such as my F-104 Starfighter displays. There will be many more new editions to come.

Of course, there are some frequently ask questions that I've become accustomed to addressing:

Authenticity: Unlike pilot autographs and similar adornments, these pieces of metal are actually very hard to 'fake' or misrepresent. People build huge egos upon their knowledge of what these wartime aircraft were painted - and almost all of my relic pieces retain some of their original wartime paint and possess all of the expected age-related elements and damage. Perhaps more important, everything I acquire comes from well known and vetted sources: known aviation archaeologists, museum collections or restoration shops. If I can't be confident, I won't put my good name to it. One error means more than a thousand successes. I know that, and guarantee everything I offer.

War graves: Understandably touchy and important. In all but a couple of cases, all of the combat loss aircraft that I offer displays for were lost under circumstances where the crew survived. One of those exceptions is my Lt. Bill Lacey P-51B display. In that case, the parts originated with the well known archaeologist Christiaan Vanhee. Bill was killed in the crash of his aircraft over Normandy, though removed from the site at the time in 1944. Before I offered parts of his P-51 in my displays I met with his surviving sister, presented her with a large piece of his aircraft, my painting of it, and obtained her blessing to memorialize her brother's memory through my work. I have found such sentiment to be universal among the veterans that I've come to know and their relatives. As a result I'm absolutely confident that I'm doing their memories a great service by offering parts of their valor to new generations to be preserved indefinitely in their homes.

  
I'm always in search of new ideas, subject requests, and of course parts of amazing aerial machines. I invite everyone to contact me and to visit my Blog and website:

Ron Cole
Contact: ColesAircraft@yahoo.com
Phone: 330.883.2493
Website: ColesAircraft.com
Blog: http://colesaircraft.blogspot.com