P&GD 10 Color Enhancer -- great for artists!

[handrawn]

PS - assuming again that it is a genuine Da Vinci which, having just had a quick refresh, still seems to be an open question

[jon404]

You're right... no, I've never seen the Principessa... after it seemed that it was a Da Vinci, the price went up from $22,000 to about $2 million... and will go over $100 million if everyone agrees that it is the real thing. Which is why it is locked up in a safe somewhere. Wouldn't have helped me, anyway. He used chalk and goache, and a quill pen... i use colored pencils and a fine-tip marker. So we are already off the rails before even getting to talent, which am not me, as it goes. But you know, if we had to actually see the original of the work we are copying... we'd go broke on the airline tickets!

Further to the copyright discussion above. Well. I went back to the Russian website that has all those airplane images, and took another look at the one I copied for my sketch. There was a little icon, back near the tail wheel, and from it, I tracked down the original artist, a fellow named Thierry Dekker, who lives in France. Just sent him an e-mail asking for permission to use his aircraft art as a starting place for my sketches. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, in aid of proper attribution, here's his website. As you can see, he's very, very good --

http://ww2artgallery.e-monsite.com/page ... ekker.html

EDIT -- and, he's put out a book, and has art in other books --
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1& ... y%20Dekker

Not bad at all! The books are promoted as guides for modelers and hobbyists, which I guess is me, so I think I'm all right. We'll see what he says. In any case, under US law, I can use an image for educational purposes, as we are doing here, relative to the features of P&GD. But I really think that we are quickly moving into an age where copyright may become meaningless for any digital content... literature, art, music. Endless reproduceabily overwhelming the older legal forms, the barbarians (like me) climbing over the gates in a horde of self-replicating slightly modified digital copies...

EDIT -- there's something else, Handrawn. Of course you are right about a serious art student trying to see the original... the colors, the brushstrokes... all the stuff that never comes through in a book. Years ago, at the Clark Museum in western Massachusetts, I was able to study a Durer silverpoint drawing, circa 1503. Those fine faint lines, oxidized a light brown, cannot be photographed properly. Highlights burning out, shadows blocking in... all the limitation of film or digital... and that's even before we lose much more going to print. Anyway, today, I'm not that serious art student. Just a retired 70-year-old guy having some fun sketching again, and enjoying threads like this on what it all means in our digital age.

[theinonen]

It must be real Da Vinci as after all it is a picture of an ugly woman just like the Mona Lisa he is famous for.

[handrawn]

ah spoken like a true art critic; I hope you go far

[zaphodeist]

The Mona Lisa was a self-portrait! As was St John the Baptist

[handrawn]

it's true the gender of the model is in dispute in certain quarters - but that is as irrelevant to whether it is a good painting or not, as is a subjective opinion on their beauty - but maybe Jon can come up with a way of using xara to enable 'experimentation'

[wizard509]

The Mona Lisa was a self-portrait! As was St John the Baptist

I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

[jon404]

Just heard back from Thierry Dekker (see above) and it's OK for me to sketch his aircraft drawings. The one I started with had been posted on the Russian website without his permission, as it turns out. Probably scanned from a print, who knows. You know, this is exactly what I've been going on about... the very nature of digital art being so easy to copy and reproduce. It is hard to imagine what the scene will be like in 10 years... how will aviation-art content creators be able to make money? Do you think that maybe Amazon will have an artwork section... pay a small amount to download a picture? And that picture could have something embedded in it, so that anyone using it would know it came from Amazon and therefore was OK to use?

EDIT -- also, Thierry would like us to know that his proper website address is
http://dekker-artwork.blogspot.fr/ ... that's the right place.