Ralph Hofer painting ... WIP

Dan Johnson II · **Joined:** Tue May 04, 2004 1:49 am **Posts:** 659

I thought the comments of George Stanford in Frank Speer's book 'The Debden Warbirds" were interesting as he says he saw the 109 shooting at Hofer as Hofer covered him down after his engine threw a rod and burst into flames. He says after he crash landed he saw Hofer buzzed him on the ground to see if he was OK and a 109 was Behind Hofer, shooting. Stanford says he could hear the 109 guns shooting. He figures that Hofer failed to clear his own tail because he was too occupied with making sure Stanford got down safe.

I'd never heard that version before.

Adam Kline · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 11:42 pm

In Troy White's book about Hofer The Last of the Screwball Aces he was able to definitively prove that Hofer was shot down by a flak tower strafing an airfield. Hofer killed 5 antiaircraft personal along with himself. The guys running the airfield were not all Germans so the records were holed up in a Yugoslav military library until the fall of the communist government. Who knows? Maybe Ralph shot down the 109 that was tailing him too.

Adam Kline

ZeamerB17 · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 11:47 pm

What do you think of that book, Adam? It's been on my want list for years.

Adam Kline · **Posted:** Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:42 am

Well I was very exited to read it being that my dad and Hofer paled around in Steinmitz High. I have read One Thousand Destroyed and Debden Eagles years before. Troy White did a great job researching the book and told me in an email he might publish a second edition. I think overall the Hofer story is so interesting yet so full of misconceptions. To finally find out how he died after all these years of speculation was almost a big letdown. According to my dad, Hofer was as reckless in the high school as he would later be as a pilot. That was proved by his record over and over. Troy White points out that the aerodrome Hofer attacked was one of the most heavily defended in the Mostar area. Not a good idea.and not good discipline which Ralph lacked in spades.

Adam Kline

ZeamerB17 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:01 am

Thanks, Adam. I have to get that book.

Hofer was a wildman, no doubt about it. I guess that's why he's one of my favorite fighter pilots.

Too bad; it would've been nice if he'd survived to tell some tales - I bet he was a heck of a storyteller.

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Mon Jun 20, 2011 3:34 pm

A quick crop view of the two completed Mustangs. Next up is the little 190 at bottom left. The skyscape will be added last and should provide a nice context for the scene. This drawing will be included in my upcoming book, due out in July.

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:20 pm

This cloudscape is taking longer than my usual pencil studies for oil paintings; I'm trying a new layering technique that is slower, but the results seem to be worth it. Should be finished next week - then we can get my book off to the printers!

Django · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:26 pm

Definitely worth it. Looks great Wade!

ZeamerB17 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:07 pm

Looks excellent, Wade!

What is your book going to consist of? Paintings? 4th FG history? Both? If you said somewhere, I missed it. :oops:

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:15 pm

Thanks - the book will feature 35 color plates of my drawings and paintings. Wish I had room for some period photos, but I already had to leave a lot of my art out - this time. It will be a small book, but with linen hardcovers with laminated full color dust jacket, and printed on premium lustre paper. I've run two test copies so far and I am impressed with the quality of the Blurb print on demand service. I decided to try it after seeing a watercolor artist's book. Much better than I thought, and the perfect way to produce a book of my art. Many photographers use Blurb (hint hint to the lensman here on WIX. Blurb.com)

I always figured that one day an art publisher would take an interest in my work, but then again I'm anxiously awaiting the Second Coming as well, and the latter is a better bet on happening first! Seriously, as a control freak I prefer things this way since I have 100% control of the layout and content, will have done everything myself including putting it in the box to you when the time comes. I will be the only source for the book. All books will be signed, and large custom remarques will be offered.

I call it "The Yielding Sky", and hopefully it will be known one day as vol. I in the series. The Mustang drawing above will be the last entry in the book. There's a blank page waiting in the otherwise complete book file.

Here's a few quick pics of test book #1, which had only 15-16 images laid in just to get an idea how the book would look. Info will be posted on my site and Facebook page (both linked below) when they are ready:

Wade

ZeamerB17 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 11:29 pm

Looks like a great book to add to the library.

It's none of my bidness, but I hope you are having someone else proofread it besides yourself. I'm not denigrating your proofreading skills - at all - but I always cringe when I find copy errors in books.

It's one of my pet peeves - no matter how good a book is, if it is riddled with errors, it is basically ruined for me. I can understand a few errors - we are human, after all - but more than that there is no excuse for, IMHO.

Good luck with it, Wade! I hope I'm able to afford a copy.

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Sat Jun 25, 2011 9:12 am

It'll be all me, but I agree that I'm sometimes shocked that I failed to pick up an error, or I get a "what the h*** was I thinking when I wrote THAT?!"

The good news for this book is by the time I've placed my order for the first 'real' run, I'll have been through three test books and many passes through the pages. Luckily in that regard there's not a lot of text - mainly images with captions as you can see in the pix above. I do have one page of all text that is my "Introduction and Acknowledgements" page, which I've rewritten about 10 times.

It's good that I decided to include the drawing above, and that it's not ready yet. Forces me to cool off a bit and when the drawing is ready to upload into the book file I can go back through the book page by page with fresh eyes.

Lastly, if a typo or similar does manage to sneak through to the final edition, I will only order about 20 at a time so I can re-upload a corrected file for the next batch. Easy as editing a website. Blurb is really a great way to do what I want to do with this book, and again, you lensmen out there may want to think about showcasing the best of your work. I had serious doubts about how my work (image quality being #1, or why bother in an artist's book?) would reproduce in a "print on demand" format such as this, but expecting absolutely nothing I was excited to get the first test copy. Really looked great, and I'll be proud to send it out. Just gotta finish this drawing!

Wade

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Sat Jun 25, 2011 3:21 pm

All done - for now.

High-Angle Snapshot
(study for oil painting)
18 5/8 x 27 7/8 in., pencil and colored pencil on toned paper
Collection of Barry Panasik

I was always pretty sure what I wanted to do with the clouds, but until I started working on it I had no idea what I was going to do with the sky other than I knew it was going to be 'simple' - to contrast the cloudwork and to support the three aircraft. So, after finally tearing myself away from the clouds I just started laying in graphite in the sky and swiping it with the eraser, laying in more pencil, swiping some more, then checking my progress in the mirror (for fresh eyes) as I went.

I love how the sky turned out, but I claim no credit for it. Just turned out that way. This entire project is pretty much drawing and painting itself - I think I've had two others like that since 1997! Now ... for the rest of the summer I have to stretch about five canvases and lay in the underpaintings for this project and a few others. My favorite part since underpainting is the least intensive step in my workflow ...

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Sat Jul 23, 2011 11:57 am

Next up, I prepared a 24 x 36 in. birch panel for the oil paint by applying five coats of Fredrix acrylic gesso. The gesso serves as a painting surface and as a barrier to protect the wood from the oils.

I transferred the outline image to the panel and basically 'copied' the tones of the drawing seen above, but in this time in paint. This is called the 'monochromatic underpainting'. As you can tell, I paid minimum attention to the sky background at this point - I "work" my skies wet-into-wet, and any underpainting work done here would just get lost. There are as many ways to paint as there are artists, but in general I carefully lay in an underpainting of the main elements (in this case, just the aircraft) for two reasons: first, I paint my backgrounds before the aircraft, and the tones/values of the underpainted aircraft give me keys to judge the sky tones against. Second, when I do get to the planes the underpainting layer functions as a 'foundation' from which to slowly build color washes up, gradually finishing off with opaques and a little impasto in the lightest areas ...

Django · **Posted:** Mon Jul 25, 2011 11:14 am

Looks great Wade.

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Ralph Hofer painting ... WIP

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