The Cole Center Zanesville

Executive Summary

The Cole Center Zanesville (CCZ) will be a transformational project in historic downtown Zanesville and elevate what has been a growing art tourism niche in Zanesville to a premiere destination that will draw thousands of aviation and art enthusiasts. CCZ will also serve as a center for educational events and programming to educate visitors on aviation history and expose youth to art, aviation, science, technology and industrial design.  

The CCZ is the vision of Ron and Erin Cole. Ron Cole’s nationally renowned works of aviation art have already proven to be a tourist attraction at his gallery on Main Street in Zanesville. CCZ will be nearly 7-times larger and dedicated to entertaining and inspiring visitors young and old. 

In mid-2023 Ron Cole and his wife, Erin Cole, purchased the formerly condemned 26,000-square-feet historic Montgomery Ward Building in downtown Zanesville, Ohio, and established Cole Center Zanesville, Inc., as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (CCZ). CCZ will transform the historic structure into a museum and interactive collection of historic aviation and automotive displays, all in the interests of art, education, tourism, and local economic development.

The CCZ project has the support of the City of Zanesville, which as has awarded a $23,000 grant to the project. The Zanesville-Muskingum County Conventions and Visitors Bureau also supports the project as it can be a center piece of the community’s arts and culture tourism strategy that will complement the Zanesville Art Museum, the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio, Yan Sun Art Museum & Gallery and downtown First Friday’s Events.  

The Coles have and will continue to personally invest in the project. However, state and private foundation grant requests and a planned capital campaign will help offset the high cost of rehabilitating the downtown building. Once renovated, fee revenues will allow the sustained operation of the Cole Art Center. 

Background

Ron and Erin Cole have a successful aviation art business, Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art, with an existing 4,000-square-feet gallery and studio at 616 Main Street, Zanesville, Ohio. Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art offers over 600 different products.  From the studio they produce prints of historic aircraft and ship them around the world. Many of Ron Cole’s high-end works include actual pieces of the historic aircrafts in the art. Learn more at https://roncole.net.

Ron is a product development engineer, artist, and designer who has worked for Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Boeing, NASA and other renowned companies. His passion has always been aviation, and 12 years ago, he made his aviation art business his full-time job. The Cole Aviation Art Gallery is a showcase and has helped to reinvigorate Main Street in Zanesville.     

The Coles both serve as officers for the Artist Colony of Zanesville (ArtCOZ), which hosts the community's First Friday Art Walks, Y-Bridge Arts Festival, and Holiday Art Fest, among other area art activities and shows. The Coles recognize how tourism art can drive economic revitalization. 

Ron Cole is a collector of historic aircrafts and aircraft elements. The center piece of his existing gallery on Main Street is the cockpit and front fuselage of a WWII A6M2 Model 21 Zero fighter. 

Most of his collection has remained in storage due to lack of display space, but the collection includes significant pieces of aviation and aerospace history, such as a girder from the airship Hindenburg, original material from the Wright Brother's 1903 Flyer and Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, sections of titanium from an SR-71 Blackbird, Space Shuttle Atlantis, Apollo 1, and hundreds of other important pieces of history and technology covering the dawn of flight to the present day. 

The exhibit space at the CCZ will allow for more displays of aviation and automotive history and art on a much larger scale than the current gallery.

CCZ is being modeled after the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine. That facility has been operational for almost 50 years and draws over 30,000 visitors a year. The Owls Head Transportation Museum was established as a non-profit collection of historic transportation-themed displays in 1974. The collection has grown to include over 150 historic aircraft, automobiles, and related artifacts. The facility is constantly booked for related events, conventions, auctions, reunions, and lectures, all of which bring thousands of visitors into the small community of Owls Head. Focusing upon education and inspiring young people, the organization plays a vital role in exposing young minds to technology, history, mechanics, and other subject matter. Learn more at https://owlshead.org.

Owls Head is a small town far removed from other cities. Conversely, CCZ is four blocks from heavily traveled I-70 between Columbus and Pittsburgh. The CCZ will be a draw for aviation enthusiasts and augment Ohio’s aviation strengths and history as home of the Wright brothers, WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker, record-setting astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, Wright Patterson Air Force Base and Museum, GE Aircraft Engines, NASA Glenn and the burgeoning eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) industry.

Cole Center Zanesville

The Coles acquired the four-story former Montgomery Ward, 35 S. 4^th Street, Zanesville, during the summer of 2023. The building had been largely vacant for over 20 years and decaying with time. The 26,000-square-feet building was condemned by the City of Zanesville before the Coles bought it. The roof has been repaired, and the property has been sealed. Plans have been made for a $3.8-million complete renovation of the building. 

A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization the Cole COZ, Inc., will own the building. CCZ will operate the facility as “an event and program venue which collects, preserves, and promotes artifacts, relics, and artwork for the benefit of the people of Zanesville, Ohio, and the surrounding communities by facilitating collaboration, tourism, and education of art history and technology.” The Coles will donate their vast collection of art, displays, and rare artifacts to CCZ.

The CCZ mission has two parts, neither of which will ever be at the expense of the other: Help recognize, preserve, and display Ohio's preeminent role in aerospace development in the United States, and to utilize our displays, our building, our events and our location, to help educate and inspire our young people in the areas of aerospace, technology, history, design, and art.

The CCZ will feature two floors of exhibit space as well as event space and classroom space. Learn more at: https://colesaircraft.world/cole-art-center

Project Economic Impacts

CCZ will become key component of the Zanesville community’s arts and culture tourism strategy that will complement the Zanesville Art Museum, the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio, Yan Sun Art Museum & Gallery and downtown First Friday’s Events.  

Based upon the Owls Head museum in Maine visitors and visitors to the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio in Zanesville, thousands of art and aviation enthusiasts can be expected to visit CCZ. 

A study by Tourism Economics calculated that visitors spent $155.4 million in Muskingum County in 2019. The Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 study found that a typical Southeastern Ohio arts and culture visitor from outside of the county spends an average of $48 in a community they visit. While The Wilds is the biggest attraction in the county, visitors often seek add-on events to turn a day-trip into a weekend trip. CCZ will provide the over 110,000 annual visitors to The Wilds a reason to turn a day trip into a weekend trip. Adding an overnight stay, greatly increases the visitor expenditures through lodging, meals and bed taxes. The Convention and Visitor Bureau (CVB) estimates adding an overnight stay increases per person expenditures by $120 per person. Even modest assumptions about visitors and overnight stays could generate a half a million dollars a year in visitor spending in Muskingum County. 

Project Educational Impacts

The Coles intend to significantly expand upon the community’s efforts to help young people of our region determine how they wish to proceed with their education. Through CCZ, the Coles will significantly expand upon their partnership with leaders of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) programs in the area by offering career exploration, dual enrollment credit opportunities, and apprenticeships. The Coles are meeting regularly with leaders from Foxfire public charter school for at-risk youth to establish joint programs for their students at CCZ.

Project Budget

Project Sustainability

CCZ has employed a CPA with non-profit experience to prepare five-year operating financial projections. Revenues will include memberships dues, admission fees, tour fees, rent and gift shop sales. Expenses include payroll, utilities, advertising, insurance, and other related operating expenses.  The Owls Head Aviation and Transportation Museum in the small town of Owls Head, Maine, serves as the model.  The Owls Head facility has been operational for nearly 50 years in a more isolated location, yet it draws over 30,000 visitors a year. The projections show CCZ opening in year two after completing renovations. Year two revenues are projected at $125,985. Projections reflect a ramp up of visitors and revenue each year, reaching positive cash flow by the fourth year of operations.

Approximately 4,500 SF of space in the basement of the building will be leased to Cole’s business, Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art for production and warehouse space. The business will pay a market rent to CCZ, which will help sustain its operations. 

 

Project Timeline

CCZ is proceeding with project design and permitting. The Coles hope to receive approval for the Ohio’s Strategic One-Time Community Investment Fund grant in the summer of 2024 and begin construction in the fall of 2024. Construction will take an estimated 14 months. CCZ should be open and operational in early 2026.

Ron Cole Highlights One of the Rarest Artifacts in His Collection

 

Naughty But Nice: A Famous Fortress's Gallant Life Through War and Peace

For the preceding half an hour they'd been circling high above Japan's once mighty South Pacific bastion, Rabaul. By that night in June of 1943, the place had little to offer the attacking American air forces but sporadic, and less-than-accurate, anti-aircraft fire. So little did crews fear it, loitering over the target wasn't even regarded as especially risky, especially in the darkness. It was an unexpected shock, therefore, when their B-17E was rocked with detonations and fire. Three rounds of hits, and the aircraft careened out of control. The navigator was the only member of the crew to get out of the burning machine. Drifting down towards the black jungle, suspended beneath his parachute, he didn't think in terms of escape. Below, the Japanese were waiting, unseen in the forest. Also unseen, the lone Japanese Navy night fighter that had shot down two Flying Fortresses in a mere few minutes. An epic end to the combat career of an aircraft that, by 1943, had experienced about everything that the War in the Pacific could throw at it.

B-17E serial number 41-2430 was built by Boeing in Seattle, Washington during days of peace. On December 6th, 1941, the aircraft left Hamilton Field, near San Francisco, California, with seven other new B-17s, on their way to reinforce General MacArthur's air force in the Philippines. On the morning of December 7th, the eight Fortresses were due to stop at Pearl Harbor's Hickam Field. The crew of '430' witnessed the Japanese attack in progress, and took the independent action of landing at a reserve field on the other side of the island (other B-17s in the flight scattered, one landing on a golf course, another trading fire with Japanese planes to brave a landing at Hickam).

B-17E '430' as she appeared between December 10th, 1941, and April 4th, 1942. Note the HAD camouflage, Hawaiian Air Force rudder stripes, and early Sperry remote belly turret. 

The atmosphere on Oahu at that time wouldn't really be experienced again by Americans until September 11th, 2001. Having been dealt such an unexpected and lethal blow by an enemy that had been grossly underestimated, something akin to near panic pervaded the military in Hawaii. Air defenses had been decimated during the initial Japanese attack, and in the minds of many there was an expectation of invasion. The B-17s that had arrived on the 7th were, therefore, pressed into local air defense. On December 10th, Brigadier General Jacob Rudolph ordered that the eight B-17s, including 430, be 'camouflaged to blend in with the local surroundings.' Accordingly, the Hawaiian Air Depot (HAD) used whatever paint they could find on hand to carry out the General's order. While the General was reportedly less than thrilled with the results, the scheme would set those few Flying Fortresses apart from all of the other 12,000 B-17s to see action throughout the war. 

430 undertook countless air searches from Hickam Field throughout the rest of December and into early 1942. As the threat of invasion abated on Oahu, but loomed ever larger in Australia, 430 arrived in Brisbane on February 16th. From then on until November, the aircraft stayed in Australia for training and refit. The older Sperry remote turret was replaced with a manned ball turret, light armament was added to the nose, and 430 became known as 'Naughty But Nice', with the hand painted addition of art to the starboard side of the nose. By that time, the short lived red and white national markings were removed from the rudder, and the red dots in the center of the stars were painted over with white. "Now the symbol is a white star without red dot," wrote one squadron historian on April 4th, 1942, "the Japs have changed our ideas about red."

B-17E '430' in Australia, between April and October 1942. The tail stripes and red star centers are gone, but she has yet to have her remote turret replaced, and she still has not received her iconic nose art.   

In November 1942, 'Naughty But Nice' was assigned to the 43rd Bombardment Group, 65th Bombardment Squadron, and participated in combat operations against the Japanese bastion of Rabaul from Garbutt Field, near Townsville, Australia. The missions were nothing like what was then happening in Europe. Washington's 'Europe First' policy meant that no new B-17 Flying Fortresses were being sent to the Pacific. While some B-24D Liberators began to trickle into Australia and Papua New Guinea, squadrons had to make do with what they had. It was common for sorties to consist of half a dozen bombers or less, flying for hours over open water, without any fighter protection. Any mechanical issue that caused an aircraft to drop from formation could lead to the loss of an entire crew, as lone bombers became lost, never to be seen again. If an aircraft went down in the water, there was only about a 25% chance that any survivors would be found and rescued. Since the missions were flown almost entirely over enemy controlled territory, any crew who bailed out of a stricken machine was likely destined to either die in the expanses of the jungle, or be captured and probably tortured and executed by the Japanese. The South Pacific was certainly not Europe in any sense. No British pubs catered to tired air crews in Papua New Guinea; only mud, sweltering heat, humidity, and malaria-carrying mosquitos. That's where 430 found herself by February 1943, operating from 7 Mile Drome, near Port Moresby.

By 1943, the War in the Pacific had turned solidly against Japan. Attrition in the Solomons and the loss of four fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway meant that the Japanese were unable to maintain any kind of air superiority at the front. When the Japanese Army was faced with a crisis in New Guinea, with the advance of Allied forces, they required heavy reinforcements to hold their line. Due to impassible rugged terrain, that meant a task force of troopships to land 3000 men and materiale by sea, without sufficient escort or air cover. On February 28th, 1943, eight troopships and eight destroyers set out from Rabaul, bound for the forward Japanese base at Lae. Their fate, although seldom appreciated, or even known, in the West, would be regarded by the Japanese as a national tragedy that was worse than their losses at Midway.

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea spanned only three days - from March 2nd through the 4th. All eight of the Japanese troopships were sunk, as well as half of the destroyer escort. Roughly 2890 men were killed. For B-17 'Naughty But Nice', it was her most harrowing mission so far of the war.

430 took off from 7 Mile Drome, piloted by 1st Lt. James L. Easter. Their target was Japanese shipping that was then off of Rooke Island. Over the target, the B-17 was attacked from the front by a pair of Ki-43 'Oscar' fighters of the 11th Sentai. The pair only made one pass at the bomber, but their fire was ferocious. 'Naughty But Nice was 'raked from nose to tail' by machine gun fire. Easter was severely wounded, and control of the bomber was taken over by copilot 2nd Lt. Russel S. Emerick, who aborted the mission and made an emergency landing at Dobodura Airfield with one blown out tire. Five wounded crew members were pulled from the aircraft, which was towed from the field for repairs. Sadly, Lt. Easter later died from his injuries. In 1948 he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 12, Site 4359). 

'Naughty But Nice' under attack by Japanese fighters during the Battle of the
Bismarck Sea, March 3rd, 1943.

By June of 1943, 'Naughty But Nice' was back in action, most often conducting small formation bombing missions against Japanese airfields around Rabaul. She was by then in the hands of a new pilot, 1st Lt. Hal C. Winfrey. On June 23rd, during a mission against a Japanese seaplane base on Timor, 430 was intercepted by Zero fighters, one of which fell to her .50 cal guns.

On June 26th, 430 lifted off from 7 Mile at the hands of pilot 1st Lt. Charles Trimingham. A young 2nd Lt. Trainee, Herman Knott, was also on board, in addition to the regular crew. The aircraft stopped at Dobodura to top off the fuel tanks and take on bombs. She was aloft again at 01:45, on her way to bomb Vunakanau, near Rabaul. It was a routine night operation. 430 dropped her bombs on target. Anti-aircraft fire was regarded as "intense" but still not threatening to the B-17. 'Naughty But Nice' loitered over the target for an additional thirty minutes, perhaps as part of  Knott's familiarization hop, and turned back for home.

Ensign Shigetoshi Kudo was regarded as a pioneer night fighter pilot in the Japanese Navy. Not content to merely follow established doctrine, he took it upon himself to both recognize the challenges being faced by his air service, and formulate all new tactics. He'd been flying against the American B-17s around Rabaul since August 1942. Like all Japanese fighter pilots, he both respected and hated the Flying Fortresses. Pre-war aerial doctrine wasn't formulated to deal with such a well armed and heavily armored opponent. On August 29th, 1942, Kudo destroyed one B-17, and possibly a second, by dropping aerial bombs on the aircraft from above. By 1943, however, American bombers were arriving over Rabaul with strong fighter escort, and were only vulnerable during night missions. Up until that point, the Japanese had no operational night fighter, which the Americans knew, and exploited with impunity. Frustrated Japanese fighter pilots, including Kudo, cowered night after night in bomb shelters, deprived of sleep, as the B-17s lazily rained down bombs from above.

Then the insufferable plight of the Japanese around Rabaul took a slight turn for the better. Ensign Kudo had left for Japan to be trained to fly a new weapon: the J1N1-S 'Gekko' night fighter. In May 1943 he returned to Rabaul, with a 'Gekko' under his control. The J1N1 was a very fast, long range, twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft. It was designed to infiltrate enemy airspace, obtain information on enemy activity, and fly away at such a high speed that enemy fighters couldn't catch it. One of Kudo's superior officers at Rabaul, Commander Yasuna Kozono, conjured up the idea that installing a pair of powerful 20mm cannon in the fuselage of a J1N1, pointing upward at a 30 degree angle, would make for a fast and stable gun platform against large enemy bombers. Kozono, and, later, Kudo, envisaged flying below and behind a B-17 in the dark, camouflaged against the background of the jungle below, approaching the bomber until within range of the cannon . . . It was believed that not even the resilient B-17 could hold together long while being pummeled by explosive 20mm shells fired into its belly.

All of these elements came together the night of June 26th, 1943; the B-17, the Japanese fighter pilot, the new weapon. The crew of 'Naughty But Nice' thought that they were receiving anti-aircraft fire. Ensign Kudo, firing from below at close range, was never seen. Kudo reported that he made three passes against the B-17. The second pass killed the pilot. The third pass set the portside wing on fire. Only 430's navigator, Jose Holguin, managed to bail out before 'Naughty But Nice' slammed into the Baining Mountains, not far from Rabaul. Another B-17, B-17F 'Taxpayer's Pride' (s/n 41-24448) fell that night to Kudo's cannon fire. Two Flying Fortresses shot down in a few minutes. Kudo only fired 164 shells to get them both. His 'Gekko' received no damage at all.

Thus ended the combat career of a gallant Flying Fortress, but the life of 'Naughty But Nice' wasn't over. She would have a new career as a memorial, healer, and a conduit through which former enemies would become friends.

Jose L. Holguin stands in the cockpit of 'Naughty But Nice' in 1982

Navigator Jose Holguin was the sole survivor among the crew of 430. The night of the crash, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese and interrogated regularly. He suffered abysmal conditions there for the remainder of the war. Holguin was liberated in September 1945. After the war, Holguin made it his life's mission to find the wreckage of his aircraft, locate other servicemen who served on her, and make amends with his former enemies: Japanese war veterans and, specifically, the men who held him prisoner in Rabaul.

Holguin's first visit to the crash site of 430 took place in 1981. With the help of local researchers and aviation archeologists, Brian and Leonard Bennett, and Bruce Hoy. One of the former pilots of 'Naughty But Nice', Hal Winfrey, accompanied the group as well. Holguin oversaw the excavation of the cockpit section on 430, and its removal from the crash site. The cockpit controls and original nose art were taken to the Kokopo Museum in Rabaul for permanent display - where they remain as of 2019. Skinning from the portside of 430, including repaired bullet damage inflicted upon the aircraft during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, and other components, passed through the hands of the Bennett family until acquired by Ron Cole of Cole's Aircraft in 2019. In keeping with Jose Holguin's desire to see pieces of 'Naughty But Nice' displayed, and her story of war and peace appreciated, Cole's Aircraft began offering small pieces of 430, accompanying Cole's original artwork depicting 430 in action, in April 2019.

The starboard side of 430, showing the original 'Naughty But Nice' nose art, on display in the Kokopo Museum in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The remains of the cockpit are also on display.

Two bullet holes in the nose of 'Naughty But Nice' are preserved: Made by 7.7 mm machine gun bullets fired by a Ki-43 'Oscar' fighter during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, they both pierced the portside aluminum skin just forward of the .50 cal side-mounted machine gun. 

               

The port wing of 430 after being uncovered in the early 1980s. The condition of the wreckage, exposed as it has been to the tropical elements around Rabaul, have taken a severe toll on the aluminum since then.

Starboard engine nacelle and landing gear of 430 c. 1982. 

Data plate of 430, in the collection of Leonard Bennett

Letters of provenance to Ron Cole from Leonard Bennett regarding the acquisition of parts
 taken from 'Naughty But Nice' between 1981 and 1984.

Ron Cole's artwork and display, honoring the aircraft and it's crew. 

  
Prints of Ron Cole's artwork, and limited relic displays that contain pieces of 430, can be obtained from Cole's Aircraft: Cole's Aircraft 'Naughty But Nice'


Copyright 2019

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

Going Nuts With Polished Metal Finishes

Polished metal is one of the hardest things for an artist to paint. There are several good reasons for this: the reflective surface immediately multiplies the complexity of a composition by revealing its otherwise out-of-frame environment, it changes the rules of light and shadow, and it makes otherwise invisible variations in a surface key characteristics of its visible properties. In short, a 100 hour project instantly becomes a 400 hour project if it has to be painted to portray convincing polished metal.

As I use both by-hand and digital painting tools to create most of my work, I've used both to experiment with painting this tricky surface. One thing that I confirmed right away was that digital painting (to be set apart from digital rendering, which is something created by software as opposed to being painted by hand using digital tools) was a terrible way to create a convincing polished metal effect. The reason: digital tools that lay down color are too uniform and precise. A digital tool will paint a perfect circle or a line without 'error'. Good for some things, but looking at the nose of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra (above) there are no perfect circles or perfect lines in evidence. While not as organic as a tree, it's still very random and free from most patterns. A brush in one's hand is the perfect tool for what's organic, as the innumerable variations that come into play as its color is laid down create their own pleasantly imperfect character. Two brush painted rivets will not be alike, and a distorted reflection in a metal panel created by those two rivets will likewise not take on an undesirable pattern. But while digital tools are bad at organics, hand tools are bad at the very thing that digital tools are good at - precision. Brushes leave brush strokes, and a convincing polished metal surface has a very fluid appearance which brush strokes tend to ruin.

     
 

My answer, as with most painting challenges I take on, has been to blend the two media together, playing to the unique strengths of both digital tools and hand tools. The polished aluminum skin of this YP-37 (above) reflects very contrasting colors. Everything you see was first put down by brush. During that process I regulated the 'shake' of my hand to break up lines and form (the human brain, like a computer's, wants to create patterns - which we have to consciously suppress as artists). Dimples around a line of flush rivets are unavoidably unique thanks to my hand's imprecision, as they would be on the actual aircraft. But the end result is not fluid. Of course it looks painted. I can see where brush strokes start and stop, and those are all bad attributes when realism is the objective.

But then I do something weird by traditional art standards: I import my brush painted work into the digital realm. Once there my painting exists within a different world that doesn't know the limiting characteristics of acrylic paint (like drying times) or the obnoxious qualities of paper (like becoming overworked). My surface is essentially a liquid that I can distort and blend at will with custom tools that I've created. A flick of the wrist with one tool blurs away brush strokes, while a careful shimmy along a line between two contrasting colors will cause that line to blend with precise control. A reflection near a rivet may have a vary sharp quality, while the reflection's characteristics may soften as it traverses the flatter surface area towards the next rivet. I can also grab some 'sky' and use a digital brush the add it atop a rivet in a 'red' area, then 'fuzz it out' as the hemispherical rivet contorts the reflection of the sky across its surface.

I think you get the idea.

Sometimes it's fun, within the digital realm, to imagine a tool dropped by some 1930s-era aircraft mechanic onto the aluminum skin of a wing fillet. I can use a tool to 'squish' that reflection to portray a vague dent. Also, I can mask off a particular panel and imagine that, for whatever reason, the alloy there had taken on a very light degree of surface corrosion - just enough to desaturate the colors in the reflection and blur its lines in relation to panels around it. Markings painted atop the natural metal might have been matte, satin, or gloss. The YP-37 sported gloss marking in its day with their own reflection's distinctive qualities from the surrounding polished metal. High gloss red, for example, will surrender some of its saturation when reflecting a deep blue sky.

 

I can't say that I've quite mastered these techniques, but I'm progressing with each new composition. Besides the processes that I've described, I will say that 70% of all art is actually observation. It almost drives me crazy now, as it's impossible for me to stand in front of a meticulous P-51 Mustang in the bright sun and appreciate it as a whole. Instead my eye is drawn immediately to its details: how flush rivets interact with the skin as opposed to raised rivets; how some raised rivets have tiny indentations in their middles while others don't; how heat effects different alloys; how skin thickness changes the way it is distorted near its edges. But, it does pay off when it comes to duplicating such things with paint - be that paint of a chemical or digital nature, or both.

- Ron Cole

Old Photos: Who Owns the Copyright?

How many times do we encounter old photographs, often taken generations ago by unknown photographers who have long passed, with someone else's proclamation of copyright emblazoned across the image? How often are we annoyed by peers and/or collectors who will only share deliberately 'dumbed-down' low-resolution images because they fear that 'their copyright' will be infringed upon? If you're me, it's very often. All the more so because I happen to know a dark secret that these folks, who often apply these protective measures out of a desire to make money off of the respective photos, do not want you to know: They have no legal right to the use of the photographs, and their invocation of any copyright is completely nefarious and illegal.

The copyright to any given photo belongs to whoever took the photograph. If they are no longer alive, then the copyright falls to their next of kin, or possibly to other parties that may vary depending upon the right of passage laws in the country of origin. Some person who bought an old original print on eBay does NOT hold the copyright to the image. Somebody who snags a strip of old negatives at a garage sale does not hold the copyright to those photos. Just because the name of the original photographer might not be known, or because the provenance of a photo is a mystery, that does not change it's legal status. The image may be used in a publication and that use might never be challenged due to the aforementioned circumstances - but that doesn't change who owns the copyright.

I suggest reading the following, if anyone doesn't take my word for this: http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/03/06/copyright-and-the-old-family-photo   

I'm a passionate activist with respect this subject. I've seen many otherwise reputable and respectable people within my historical genre' try to lay claim to any and every photograph that they can get their hands on. I've had some of them refuse to share a photo with me, or anyone else, because they wrongly claim to hold the copyright and plan to make us buy their book someday (which typically never gets published). In other cases some of these individuals will only share an image with a huge 'copyright' symbol in the middle of it. These measures are also done as a not-so-subtle means of marking their territory; to deny something of value to others out of a sense of supremacy. Not everyone is as ill-intentioned, of course, but they're out there. Some people just assume they own the copyright to these sorts of photos, and they proclaim their 'right' because so many others do.

And this needs to change.

I make it a goal in my life to accumulate all of the old and historically significant photographs that I can from all possible sources and share those images by any and all means necessary. I do that under the terms of fair use, as I don't make a penny by so doing and by so doing I contribute to the communal education of all who are interested in seeing them, discussing the photos, and passing them on to others under the same terms.

See the definition of 'fair use' here: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use

I share many of these photographs on my Japanese WWII Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/JAircraft


All the best!

Ron Cole

Japanese WWII Aircraft Aotake Primer Coatings

Contrary to Western misconceptions during the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese were ahead of many other nations within certain fields of innovation and technology.  Some people are aware of the vastly superior Japanese oxygen 'long lance' torpedoes, superior optics, long ranging submarines, and the venerable Zero fighter that out-maneuvered everything in the sky in 1941.  But few know about aotake.  This strikingly bright coating was developed as a corrosion preventative in the early 1930s for use in the aeronautical industry, and it is technically one of a family of zabon enamel coatings. Surrounded by salt water and employing the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, the Japanese were keenly aware of the importance of corrosion resistance.  The Japanese also possessed a somewhat unique attitude with respect to the design and construction of their aircraft.  Unlike other airplanes built for the air forces of other countries, Japanese aircraft were built to last.  Disadvantaged as Japan was in terms of industrial output, the Japanese Army and Navy were expected to make do with the machines they were given for several years - as opposed to several months in the cases of other air forces.  Japanese aircraft were built by hand, like Swiss watches.  While these standards were compromised as greater demands were placed upon the industry after the Pacific War started in earnest, the application of the aotake primer coatings continued until almost the end of the war.  Nothing preserved metal better in those days.

Aotake remains an unsung hero; superior to the American zinc chromate primers.  Studies were conducted during and after the war in the United States that confirmed this, and aircraft archaeologists since the war have often remarked on the far greater longevity of Japanese aircraft abandoned in the jungles of the South Pacific.  Charles Darby, the famous Australian wreck hunter, once said, "If you happened upon an aircraft in the bush that at once appeared amazingly intact, chances were that it was Japanese."

But it remains mysterious stuff.  There are few examples of it still around to study.  In spite of its longevity, 70 years or more has been long enough to virtually erase it from the remaining Pacific wrecks that remain unsalvaged.  Most Japanese aircraft that were restored for museums and private collections after the war were stripped and rebuilt in such a way that this original material was destroyed in the process (ironically, some of these aircraft today are internally coated with something akin to the inferior zinc chromate).  It's unfortunate, because few paints of wartime heritage could ever be described as genuinely 'pretty'.  Aotake is an exception.  In modern terms this coating might best be described as a candy coat.  It was a translucent clear coating that was tinted in the interests of making it visible for uniform application.  It possessed a high gloss, and due to its application over bright aluminum components it took on the appearance of a metallic-like bright blue or green that would look perfectly appropriate on the exterior of an American hot rod. Until the 1980s, aotake remained virtually unknown, like most details concerning Japanese WWII aircraft colors. But it is greatly misunderstood even today.

The coloring that was added to aotake did not have a specific standardized formula. While it could most often be described generally as 'blue/green' in appearance, it was very often more green than blue, more blue than green, yellow/green, and everything in between.  Furthermore, all of these shades could be encountered within the framework of the same individual aircraft; often adjacent or overlapping each other. Aotake was applied to individual pieces - large and small, panels and braces - both before they were assembled and after assembly. Aotake was applied throughout the fabrication and assembly process and thus the same piece of metal might receive anywhere from one coat to multiple coats of aotake - each coat not necessarily the same shade. Various components were coated by various subcontractors (the Japanese aviation industry was highly decentralized long before aerial bombing made it even more so), and even within subcontractors, different batches of aotake were of different shades.  When these thousands of parts were assembled, the end result was very much a patchwork of subtly different colors.

The following examples of applied aotake originated from the same aircraft - A6M3 Model 32 Zero, serial number 3148, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in September 1942:

      

After an aircraft was constructed, including its exterior sheet aluminum, the Japanese commonly over-sprayed the bright aotake with dull black paint.  But this was very much a hit and miss application. Obviously, much of the aircraft structure was difficult to access, and the black coating was very unevenly applied.  When surviving examples of these parts are studied today, bright areas of aotake that were protected and covered by other components during construction can be seen adjacent to areas of dull black:

  

The history and technical application of aotake might not be seen as especially critical archaeology, but when historians falsely attribute pieces of aircraft that were shot down over Pearl Harbor as originating from different machines due to different shades of aotake, for example, it's important to know the truth regarding the application of this material.  It's also important for those intending to rebuild a Japanese aircraft that is potentially invaluable, and it certainly offers scale modelers with yet another tool in their arsenals to create a uniquely accurate model.  Last but not least, we should give credit where credit is due: the Japanese got this one right!

- Ron Cole


  

Mission Impossible: Turning Dusk to Day in Eleven Hours

by Ron Cole


When I worked in LA as an industrial designer for Mattel, one of their art directors told me once that a model I'd spent days making was perfect except that it needed to be about 5% smaller.  Those of us accustomed to that sort of work and dealing with professional clients have all had similar experiences at one time or another.  Such deflating and anti-climactic 'reveals' after hours and hours of labor can be a blow leading to a domino effect of other delayed projects, marathons in the workshop (I worked 26 hours straight once), and cancelled recreational plans.  But they can also present thrilling challenges that provide a bit of spice to one's life, and a real sense of accomplishment when something that seemed impossible is successfully completed.

Case in point:  When So and So Aviation Magazine (that's not their real name) contacted me to do their cover art for their January/February 2014 edition, I was pretty excited.  With a circulation of over 400,000, the business marketing side of me saw how that kind of exposure would be fantastic for my business.  Of course with that came the added pressure of feeling like I had to do something particularly spectacular, but with almost two months of lead time I wasn't too worried about it.  My previous experience as a designer - where people say that it's not enough to be the best, you have to also be the fastest - had made me a very efficient artist.  All speed ahead.  I completed the painting in about three weeks:

They liked it when they received it, and in fact I'd shared numerous 'in progress' images of the piece as it evolved to make sure that the composition fit the page and that my overall direction was what they were looking for.  I sent them the high resolution file, felt proud, and moved onto other commissions.

At about the time I was eagerly expecting to see the magazine released, I received a call from one of their art people.  The head art director liked the painting, but felt that the color palate was all wrong for a magazine cover.  It wouldn't 'pop' enough on the shelf.  (Ironically, I knew exactly what he was talking about.  I'd constructed a prototype scale motorcycle for a company once, painted it dark metallic orange, and while they loved it in almost every way - they rejected it because of the color.)  I was thinking, Okay, I'll tweak the colors; maybe brighten it a bit.

No.

They asked me if I could produce a 'daylight version' of the same painting - and they needed it in three days. In my head, I heard Stewie Griffin cry, "Say whaaaaaat???" But by the end of the phone call my somewhat sheepish assurances that I could do it had become more resolute.  I was trying to work out in my head how it could be done while we spoke.  I could do it - almost certainly.

Of course what remained entirely uncertain was how good the results would be.  Changing the light source in a finished painting is demanding enough all by itself.  This would be a whole new color palate and an entirely different background.  I thought I'd been so slick when I made the aircraft in my composition sport a high gloss reflective finish, and now that finish would have to reflect a completely different environment.  This was hardly going to be the 'particularly spectacular' cover I'd spent three weeks painting in the first place.

Thank God for my weird artistic process.  Having been an old-school acrylic on canvas painter in my youth, and a digital painter who produced architectural work for develops later in life, I'd combobulated a way to play to the strengths of both media.  One side effect of the process is that all of my work exists as high resolution .psd files with most elements in each composition saved on separate layers.

While hardly representative of the way I normally paint a painting, I think that the process through which I accomplished this drastic and last minute revision is worth describing.  

Step One: The background would be a total loss, no avoiding that.  It depicted a set sun located roughly behind the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill.  Any daylight composition would have to put the sun somewhere out of frame above everything, or behind the viewer.  All of the layers that related to the sky and clouds were deleted.  The ocean surface ultimately reflected the sky and its color palate - so all of its layers were deleted. So much for all of those hours spent, so sad.

Step Two:  Say 'goodbye' to all of the remaining color.  In the digital realm it's usually easy to change colors, but you can't just press a button and get what you want.  In this case I spent a good hour trying to see if I could manipulate the original color palate of the aircraft and other elements bit by bit, but it was obvious that this method would be more trouble than it was worth.  Somewhat reluctantly, I flattened all of the remaining layers (minus the sky and water) and turned them black and white:

  
Talk about a regression!  At this point I was essentially dealing with a very complicated colorization project, the likes of which I've done with old Civil War and WWII period photographs - except with a lot of new painting inevitably involved.

Step Three:  Paint a new sky and ocean surface.  I cheated here - sort of.  I seldom have any reason to be thankful for the fact that I leave many painting projects unfinished and languishing about for years.  In this case it was a blessing, as I was lucky enough to find a mostly completed sky with a light source appropriate for my needs.  The sun was just out of frame to the upper left, which was perfect.  It would justify a somewhat back-lit aircraft, and the sun's partial obstruction by thin clouds would diffuse the light and eliminate the need to paint hard shadows over everything.  Wonderful!  All I had to do from scratch was paint a new ocean surface, and slip the whole canvas behind all of the foreground elements:

  
Welcome to our new color palate!  But it was not now just a matter of re-introducing these colors to all of the things that had been previously orange.  The digital realm allows me to do that, insofar I can mask off areas of pixels or choose pixels of similar value and color them - but the end results never look realistic; they look like a colorized old picture.  The reason for this effect is because in the real world there are frequencies of light bouncing off of everything from all sorts of primary and secondary light sources, and in that process those frequencies of light - those combinations of colors - become separated.  What our human eyes seem to interpret as a specific shade of blue, for example, is in reality a hundred slightly different hues.  Digital colorization does not replicate that (the third aircraft from the top reveals what it looks like to apply simple colorization techniques):

  
Step Four:  The only thing left to do was to paint, keeping in mind the inherent attributes of the different surfaces being rendered.  Glossy blue will exchange a potion of its color value with the color value of what's being reflected off of it, while the values of non-reflective surfaces will still be changed by ambient light, though not in the same way . . . all things that I believe are best learned by simply observing the real world. But the painting at this point more resembled a complex paint-by-numbers exercise; employing semi-opaque color so as not to obliterate the original forms.  Some additional changes were made.  The soft shadows left behind from the previous light source were painted over.  The clouds that were previously reflected in the aircraft were changed to match the new background.  The lights of the aircraft were turned off.  Details, like the pilot, that had been cast in darkness from being more directly back-lit were brightened.  Lights were turned off and the bright exhaust flames were painted to look more subdued.  I moved some things around.

The end result, eleven hours later, looked pretty good:

Overall I'm very happy with the result - somewhat to my surprise and very much to my relief.  I was able to pull off an unprecedented last minute revision with essentially two days to spare.  What I have to thank for it, primarily, besides finding a good background that saved quite a bit of time, was the use of digital media.  As an old-school artist who once hated the so-called 'subversion' of all that was 'genuine' about the art of painting, I used to fear what I did not then understand.  Today I cannot imagine doing what I do for a living without it, because while I still believe that there is great value in the works of chemical pigments and animal hair brushes, the industry that we work in today is far more demanding than any paint on canvas alone can adapt to.

If I'd painted this painting originally on a stretched piece of canvas - I would have, without any question, lost this magazine cover.  Period.


- Ron Cole