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Matthews Aviation Art


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Greetings everyone!  My name is John Matthews.  I've been a model airplane hobbyist for my entire life.  For a few years now I've been creating digital aviation artwork.  I have an Internet gallery on my website, Matthews Aviation Art.  I'd enjoy sharing some of my work with you here on this forum and hearing your comments.

 

My process always involves creating a 3D model of the aircraft I plan on featuring in my artwork...

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Above you see what was, at the time, the nearly completed model I made for my McDonnell F-101B projects.  After completing the 3D model the model is laid out flat in a 2D space, then its texture layers are painted in Photoshop...

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After this, I start creating panel lines and other details for the planes making certain everything lines-up properly and looks appropriate.  Once the model has its textures, its exported into another application I use to create scenery and atmosphere, with clouds, terrain, and atmospheric effects to suit the scene.  With any luck, the finished result finished comes out like this...

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This is a low resolution rendering of my completed scene.  Sort of a "sketch" to see what everything will look like before battening down the hatches and waiting a couple weeks for the larger, higher resolution artwork to complete rendering.  The whole process is quite a bit like painting, but without having to clean up brushes and worrying about running out of paint 😉.

 

I hope to get acquainted with all of you very soon, and to contributing to this forum.

 

 

Cheers!

 

-John

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I like everything thing that is going on in this. My only caveat, and this is just my single opinion, is that it looks like a screenshot from a movie within a flight simulator like DCS or whatever it's called. It's beautiful and truly amazing what you're able to do. Maybe I'm just biased as when I want a piece of artwork I think more along the aspect of a brush painting. But again it really is magnificent and hope you keep up the good work!

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Greetings everyone!  I thought I'd share these since I'm just getting a start on a new project involving the B-52...

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Just getting a start on the basic fuselage shape.

 

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Extruding the wings and stabilizers from the fuselage shape.

 

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Wingtips, flight deck contour, and a nose added, as well as a shape detail for the wing flap area.  I haven't decided whether this will be a G or and H model.  I'd like to be able to model the plane to a point where I can save it as a "base model" for three different versions.  We'll see.  I'll likely work on the engine pods over the weekend.

 

Cheers!

 

~John

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It's "Outboard Engine Pod Day!"

 

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So the engine pods begin as an extrusion of polygons from the wing.  Those are then shaped, and further extrusions are made, until a very basic shape is sculpted which resembles the actual engine pod.

 

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There's a lot going on in this process, most of it very unexciting.  But, the end result is this generic engine pod.  The first pods I'm going to make will be C/D model engines, like for the J-57-P-19.  I can save it in that state and use that as a "base" engine housing for G model J57-P-43 housings, then modify it again for the TF33-P-3 housings.  The nose can be modified in the same way, since there's some difference in the shape of the nose between the D and the G models.  The tail gun is going to be handled the same way.  Not much difference between the D and the G, but the H had the Vulcan cannon and radar blisters since there was no longer a gunner back there.  I'll work toward refining this a bit more tomorrow.  Until then, have a great evening!

 

~John

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  • 3 months later...
On 1/11/2020 at 9:08 AM, John Matthews Art said:

Staying with the Voodoo for a bit, here's a completed illustration I titled "Voodoo Patrol".  It depicts three F-101Bs from the 87th FIS from what was Lockbourne AFB, near Columbus, OH.

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RF -101 pictures? Paintings?

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  • 4 months later...
On 1/5/2020 at 11:05 AM, John Matthews Art said:

 

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Hmmmm...can't quite put my finger on it but I'm getting incredibly strong flashbacks to a certain other hobby very relevant to this particular whole entire forum thingie.....

 

 

*randomly sliding decals everywhere nightmares*

Edited by Just call me Ray
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