The Evolution Of Aviation

As soon as I get more pictures scanned in, and then put them here, this page will be a shrine, an alter if you will, to my mural. I did it. I thought it up. I designed it. I had help. I'm damn proud of it.

I guess a description of it would help explain the pictures. It's 11'x 25', located on the far east side of the north wall of the cafeteria in CHHS West, Cherry Hill, NJ. The mural consists of:

Center

Home

A painting of the Earth six feet in diameter. It's the shot of Africa, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia and such that is so famous. (But my buddy Dave the ninja went a little crazy painting the clouds, so the Sahara is currently under 6' of snow according to him.) Anyway.... There were about ten different people who helped out with the Earth. Not that it took that many, but they were there anyway.

Have a look at my picture of the Earth.

Top

Aviation History: The Beginnings of Flight

A beautiful airbrushed sunset (as always, my many thanks to Chris Exley for teaching me how to airbrush, and for doing most of the sunset), with two paintings on top of it. On the right, a Bald Eagle in flight, as if it was swooping down on something. I did the head. 'Squez did the rest of the eagle. And a damn fine job he did too.

See some picrures of the eagle: A close-up of the Eagle's Face, a slightly less close-up shot of the eagle, showing it's entire body (pay close attention to the eagle's right wing - Jim is amazing!), and finally, a picture just like the last one, but showing the eagle in conext of a little more mural.

And on the left side is Icarus, of Greek Mythology fame, falling to his death. Dave did Icarus, after much prodding and pleading. Took him forever and a day, but it was worth it. It turned out better than I could have done it, and for that, I'm grateful.

I have 2 close-up pictures of Icarus. One is turned so you can see Icarus upright, and the other shows Icarus in the conext of the sunset

The Left Side

Modern (20th Century) Aviation

This is the largest single section of the whole mural. And it's mostly all mine. There's some really nice, 3-D looking planes painted here. My thanks to Keith Ferris for being such a wonderful muralist and giving me the ideas to work with. Up top, we start with a rather puny looking Wright Flyer. Directly under that, we see a large blimp, partially cut off by the edge of the mural, partially hidden behind the next plane. A P-12. This was taken, almost exactly, from a Keith Ferris mural of his dad leading a squadron of these. Keith's dad was an instructor pilot at Kelly Field, in Texas, and flew #2. My very first solo attempt at a painting, and a damn fine plane if I say so myself. Under that, we have the Bell X-1. It's slightly more orange than I would have liked, but that's life. My first attempt at using water to do shading. ....And now, the Ugly Piece of Sh**. There is a rather large, rather ugly B-17 Bomber sitting on the lower left corner. It's huge. It's ugly. I want to paint over it with a nice DC-10 or something. It's absolutely horrific. Chris Dobinson did that. I want to get rid of it. It's also out of place in the time-line of the story the mural tells. Then, moving back up, on the left of the B-17 is a diamond formation of T-38's. It's from one of my father's pictures. I think it was his first formation flight, or something. Again, I tried to use water to do some shading, and give it a nice 3-D effect. Next is a lovely F4 Pantom II. This was taken directly from a picture of my dad flying, about to refuel, so I put his name on the side of the cockpit, just like his real plane. The tail's a little screwy, but not all that noticable. Strewn throughout the left side are various incedental clouds. I did them too. I thought they looked really cool. That ends the period of Modern Aviation.

See my pictures: the Wright Flyer from up close, or farther back; The P-12 and Blimp together, a close up of the P-12, or a shot slightly farther back; A picture of the blimp; the Fighters; A picture of the X-1; shots of the T-38s: rear plane, front 3 planes, or all four;and 3 shots of the F-4 (close up, slightly farther back, and from wide).

The Bottom/Right Side

Space Exploration

The first painting is of the Apollo-Soyuz joint USA-USSR space venture. It's a cute little picture that neither dave nor I were ever satisfied with, but we left it anyway. Then, my pride and joy. Taking up the right side is what Dave and I both consider to be our best works. It is a scene of the Space Shuttle Atlantis taking off. Chris Dobinson originally did it, and it was nice. I thought it looked a little too 2 dimensional, so I started playing with it here and there. Eventually, I wound up completely overhauling the entire thing single handed, simply because I couldn't think of what else to do with the mural. Anyway, Dave did the clouds. Also, I had mixed a few paints together and tried them on the sky, and with Dave's clouds matched on my sky, we actually had to step back and ask if it was real. Plus, with the new overhauled shuttle, I believe, it truly is the best part of the entire wall. I just wish I had a more close upshot of it, so I could include it here.

The Top Right Corner

The Future

Well, it's a long story, but the short of it is that Jere, the guy who originally got me to paint the mural, is a huge Star Trek fan. So, we naturally had to put the USS Enterprise in somewhere. We had the past in the mural, we had the present. We did need the future. I thought maybe we could have a space station or a Earthrise over a moon colony kind of thing, but I caved in and we put up the Enterprise. It's the Enterprise D, from the Next Generation TV series, in case you didn't know, or were wondering.

Behind the Scenes stuff

All told, the mural took close to 600 manhours work. Mostly because it was done in very short, very sporadic spurts. It was started in Dec. of 1992, and worked upon feverishly until March 3, 1993. Then it just sat there til I got back to it that summer. Three weeks of non-stop solo painting was done on my part, and then I got locked out of the building! A school for Pete's sake! Well, it just sat there again til November of '93, and I again worked on it sporadically. I had help here and there, but on the whole I was alone (in painting, as well as in outside support). It wasn't until the summer of 94 that I got any significant help again, and after stopping only to attend NYSC, I finished the mural on September 2, 1994. It was the day before I moved in at Penn, and I vowed I wouldn't go off to college without finishing it. And aside from being an NYSC delegate and earning Eagle Scout, this is my proudest accomplishment.

Credits

• Dave Nghiem-He did Icarus, the clouds behind the Space Shuttle, most of the earth, and and various odds and ends. I pestered him to no end, but he was absolutely essential.
  
• Jim Vasquez- He only did the eagle, but it was on short notice, and at the wrong end of a death threat from his mom.
  
• Chris Exley- He airbrushed the sunset in. (And broke Jim's airbrush while he was at it!)
  
• Sumit Dutta- He'd kill me if I didn't put his name here. And he even helped paint a little of the flat backround. A little!
  
• Mike Phillips- Mike's just Mike. No matter what. He helped a lot, but he doesn't even know it.
  
• Chris Dobinson- Well, at least the Enterprise still looks good.
  
• The Late Mr. Jim Chesbro- he was always stopping in with advice on what colors would be good where, and he lent me a lot of supplies. 'Course, if it was up to him, I would be the next Keith Ferris, but then again, I'd still be doing this mural! Thanks Mr. Chesbro, we'll miss you!
  
• Mrs. Thelma (What'sher name this week?) Krueger- She worked with me on the actual design, and without her, it would be a completely different wall, and I probably never would have learned how to paint.
  
• Lt. Col. Dr. Jere Gainer USAF (Ret)- (I just had to write his name like that. It feels so damn important when you see it like that.) He gave me the idea in the first place. He actually asked me to do it!
  
• Dennis McCauley and Rick Simon- they let me paint on their wall.
  
  
• I know that there's many more people who helped (like Ning and Tim) but, quite frankly, they were helping back at the very beginning (when the wall was still tan!), and I don't remember what they did..... And then there were the people who helped for about 5 minutes, to look like they were painting, when everyone was watching.

The pictue above shows (from left to right) Jim Vasquez, my girlfriend at the time Jen Albright, Me, and Dave Nghiem.
No, Jim's not that short, he's just sitting behind us a bit.