Miss Detroit

Urban "Ben" Drew was famous for flying his P-51 Mustang "Detroit Miss" in the ETO during WWII. After completion of his European tour, Drew served with the 413th Fighter Squadron, 414th Fighter Group, flying P-47N-5s from Iwo Jima. I have chosen to depict his "Jug" being serviced on Iwo Jima in 1945. On another forum it was mentioned that Ben himself said that the aircraft was named "Miss Detroit", not "Detroit Miss II" which I originally thought. I'll most likely add some little tidbits of detail such as tools and things in the foreground. I will portray this same scene in oil pastel as well.

Six Shooter in Pastels (Complete)

Here is the final Hellcat piece depicting Alex Vraciu in his Hellcat on June 19, 1944 as he shot down 6 Japanese Yokosuka D4Y "Judy" dive bombers during the First Battle of the Phillipine Sea in what came to be known as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot".

Hellcat in Oil Pastels WIP update

Here's another update with more background and the Hellcat started. It's a lot of layering and burnishing with the stomps, and cutting of stencils.

Six Shooter WIP in oil pastels

Here's a couple of "in-progress" shots of the Hellcat piece which is being rendered with oil pastels. Again, it was scanned on a small scanner so I always have to tile and piece the images together in photoshop and it can be a pain in the behind. One shot has the Hellcat from my acrylic sketch placed. As I did in the Spitfire piece, I placed it to help give me some perspective while progressing with the piece as a whole.