How do you get your outlines?

[nottsack]

I want to have an attempt at profile making. I am wondering how you get the outline for the aircraft? Do you just use a blueprint? That seems to be the easiest way. Any information on the process would be a help. Id like to start with either a zero or f4u. Are either of these a bad choice? Is there something I should do before attempting one of these aircrafts?

[Supah]

I want to have an attempt at profile making. I am wondering how you get the outline for the aircraft? Do you just use a blueprint? That seems to be the easiest way. Any information on the process would be a help. Id like to start with either a zero or f4u. Are either of these a bad choice? Is there something I should do before attempting one of these aircrafts?

Hi! Yes the best way is to get them from drawings. Find the best possible drawings you can because if these are wrong then the whole profile is going to look wierd. These aren't really bad choices as these are much loved aircraft for which a lot of refference material is available. The main thing you should do before starting is getting as much refference material as you can of the plane you are doing and making sure you are proficient at the use of the graphics program you intend to work with.

[adlabs6]

One other note, take a few moments to compare your different source materials before commiting to much drawing. My Avenger project was set back a bit because one of the line drawing sources I had was wrong in a few places compared to the photos and other drawings.

[Jesters-Ink]

Yes . . .always back it up with photographs. I've never seen two profile outlines the same, so take your best shot.

[nottsack]

I found The Blueprints - Reference Image Database - 17728 blueprints online They are kind of small. Will it hurt the integrity of the blueprint if I enlarge them?

[adlabs6]

Well I never used the actual blueprint in my final work, but instead recreated my own version. So if the original gets some blurring it won't matter anyway, as it's only a guide tool for my higher resolution artwork.

[santynus]

Hi nottsack

try this links

http://www.airwar.ru/other/drawe.html

www.suurland.com

Eduardospage

??????? ????????? N 1 - Aircraft Drawings N 1

??????? ????????? N 2 - Aircraft Drawings N 2

cheers

[Hunhunter]

Hmm....so am I the only person to use photographs to form the initial shape?

[nottsack]

What resolution do most people do their profiles in?

[Jesters-Ink]

Hmm....so am I the only person to use photographs to form the initial shape?

This is a great debate and one worth pursuing.

You are not the only one HH, but be aware that even photographs aren’t 100% foolproof. All lenses are subject to distortion including the human eye.

So the only foolproof method of achieving a correct outline is by acquiring the original blueprints if they exist. I don’t know of anyone that has that kind of access.

As a matter of interest, my method for making the first outline is to gather as many profile outlines as possible. Overlay them all with degrees of opacity, then overlaying the best profiled photograph over the top. I then draw my best guess from this.

My P-51D outline was drawn using this method and although quite a few people think she is skinny, quite a few of the top notch profile artists have the same “ish” shape.

All of Phoenix-Art profiles are 300dpi with a canvas size of A3, very flexible and more than manageable.