Sketching from the Air
This summer we flew from the Bay Area to Seattle in a small (Cessna 182) airplane. We went with some friends to visit some other friends and had a blast.
On the way up I sat in the back seat of the plane and enjoyed spectacular views of the Cascade Arc volcano peaks strung out all along our route. A lot to capture – I drew the window in ink then decided to try doing the vistas of mid-Oregon in watercolor only. A bit unconventional but I like how it came out.
On the way back we spent a lot of time in the clouds at 11,000 feet, so being in the front I sketched the plane’s panel. All the right gauges are there, although they’ve slid around a bit!
Related Topics: Interiors, Landscapes, Oregon, Travel Sketching
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October 28th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Nice sketches; especially the one of the airplane cockpit!
October 18th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Oh my, both sketches are great but the landscape one is SO pretty. I love the way you’ve contrasted the black and white of the window with the sweet colours of the land below. Very nice!
October 14th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Great sketches of some difficult scenes. I have never even considered sketching the groun down below and the dashboard of a car is scary to me, let alone one in a plane! Nice work.
Ronell
October 7th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
great choice of colours in the first one, it’s really a nice one, and i like the second one but…who’s flying the plane?!
October 7th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Wonderful sketches, love the panel.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Course you could have called it “Things are looking down”!
At any rate, nice work. And here I was (last June) on a turbo prop job on the second leg of a trip to Colorado, and I didn’t even think of sketching out the window. I do have an excuse, a fellow watercolorist lady kept me busy the whole trip with shop talk!
Nice sketch with tasteful color as always. Hard to do that, sketching scenery out a window of a moving plane. My attention is focused easily on the color area, leaving the plane structures to provide context.
October 7th, 2007 at 5:07 am
I really like that first one.
I’ve often taken photos out of a plane window but never sketched. I guess it’s that thing about not quite knowing how long something is going to look the same. However I’ve sketched out of a car window on long drives through Arizona and New Mexico. I guess I should try the plane next time!
October 6th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Great sketches! I love that first one out the window! Cool experiment. It works really well.
I once flew round-trip in a four-seater single-prop plane (may very well have been a Cessna 182, I don’t know) between Aspen and Vegas. Those smaller planes fly at lower altitudes and so you can see a whole lot more detail of what you’re flying over. Really some incredible views of desert terrain on the trip I took. I also flew “copilot” — en route to Vegas. No sketching, but I did shoot some Super 8 footage. Didn’t do it justice, though.
October 6th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I like the effect of the inked window and simple water colour fields. That really is what it looks like from up there – the immediate solidness of the window contrasts with the seemingly ephemeral landscape below. The window seems more real at that moment!!!
I have flown several times with my husband in Cesnas, and in commercial planes as well. Never thought to draw while I’m up there. Nice painting!