Ian M. Palmer - Aviation & Transport Art

How it's done
Producing some of these pictures involves a wider range of techniques than making any others, except the comics. I can't photograph aircraft in flight, so I use, as always, whatever I need to to get the job done: 3D models of aircraft, Bryce and Vue terrains and atmospheres, photographic textures and background elements, then postwork using filters and paper or canvas texture effects.

Cars and boats, of course, I can photograph, and I'm lucky enough - by choice - to live where there are boats aplenty.

Sometimes, as with my series of studies of the B24j Liberator, I'll revisit an image at postwork, render or even composition stage, to try another approach or something I didn't know how to do the first time around.

History
Except where the image has started with a photograph, I haven't tried to reproduce accurately historical liveries or indicia, or landscapes or weather conditions. Instead, I've tried for the feel: the excitement and risk of leaving the ground with von Richtofen's wood-and-canvas Flying Circus, or flying out of the sun at the controls of the fastest machine human beings had ever made.

Of course, I have my favourites. In aviation subjects, the DR-1, perhaps the most exciting aircraft in history, is one. Initially, I intended to resist the obvious colouration, but what can you do? I had to do at least one Red Baron.