OK, now back to the point of this post....*cough* hi over here*waves*
This is my most recent work, I still have to do some "popping" make certain corners pop out,giving the cowling band more of a polished look.I also fixed the type as the style is very cool but hard to read so I gave it a few em's of space But I am happy with the diection it is going. I also am learning lots about PhotoShop CS3!!! which is never a bad thing!
After Blowhards comments I went back to a great book called" the Study of Shape, Form, Depth and Dimmension. It's more for drawing and painting. But it has a good chapter about combining mutliple shapes and seeing them for the basic shapes they are.
The I-16 if you were to rough it would be numerous tubes and ellipses, or circles.
So keeping that in mind I re-did the shading and added very subtle wear. This is a commanders plane in 1936. Commanders and all major ranking officials aircraft were kept in emaculate condition, even when the war started.The ground crew recieved rewards for keeping the planes in tip top shape. If you go to Wikepedia and Type in Hero of the Soviet Union. A search can be done of all tthe pre-war and GPS medals and awards, awarded to Russian military personel. A distinguished carrer in the Soviet forces could land you a nice house and a decent life. Go to Avia-n-Areo and look there. There are a quite few, sadly, pictures of Barbarossa showing planes that are in well preserved, obviously High ranking personel aircraft abbandoned. There's one of an I-153 that is as white as snow and the cowling band is polished to the point of a mirror. Everything around it is destroyed.
So here's my latest effort:
