My First Profile

[Tobarghe]

After being "let go" from a local sign company a month before Christmas, I decided to do a profile of a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat in between job hunting activities. It is based on a B&W photo of Lt. O'Hare in the cockpit of a F4F-3 (about 1942) with F-3 on the fuselage. I used the Adobe CS suite on a Mac with OS X.
Thank you,
Edward Grabot
illustr8tor64@hotmail.com

References:
Warpaint Series #9 Grumman F4F Wildcat
Kagero #12 Grumman F4F Wildcat
Monografie Lotnicze #20 F4F Wildcat
Squardon/Signal Publications US Navy Aircraft Camouflage & Markings 1940-1945
Wings Volume 2, Number 1 February 1972
Modelpres Grumman Wildcat Profily letadel ll. svetove valky 9
And a special thanks to Dave Greene for
Janes Publishing Company Limited Hellcat &
Osprey Aircraft of the Aces #3 wildcat Ace Of World War II

[Supah]

It looks good but it would probably benefit from stronger shading. Also some of the outer edges seem to be aliased. How do you make your selections? From shapes, with a marquee tool or with the magic wand tool? The latter gives rather poor results.

[Serval]

Good looking profile.
Would suggest to make the white lettering and markings a bit less white.
First because paint seldom is pure white, but also since it works better with the highlights like the 3 at the front and the top of the star. Now the highlight doesn't work there. If you have the white a bit darker, then you can also apply highlights there.

[gamary]

Welcome to this quickly-growing club! I'm very impressed with the landing gear detailing you've done. For the rest, I'd agree with Supah and Serval's comments.

Hope you'll quickly find some work. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in the meantime.

[jrcjr65]

Very nice! Landing gear is impressive. Prop work is nice too. Thats one profile that I want to do as well

[Tobarghe]

Thank you for the input. Lets see.. I use the object layer and select it.(apple + layer) on a Mac. I had originally used 1/48 scale as the size @ 250 dpi. But increased the size before jpeging it. I think that may account for some of the aliasing. Open for any suggestions about size and dpi.
Edward Grabot

[Tobarghe]

Thanks,
The prop was easy..The landing gear was most challenging.
Edward Grabot

[Tobarghe]

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement.

[Supah]

Yeah tobarge I think that is where you are going wrong. I asume you use photoshop on you mac? I'll try and get some pictures together to show how you can do it with almost no aliasing in photoshop on a Windows based machine. I think it should be largely the same.

[JMSmith]

hi Tobarghe,

your profile is very very good, could do with another pass with the shading underneath the fuselage, not to much, just a tad more.
your biggest problem is the undercarriage, you have done a fantastic job of drawing it, but it looks flat, you need to round of the varios tubes and cylinders, dead easy, just lighten the front and darken the rear.
your prop work is fantastic