Have you ever heard the phrase "an instructional manual would have been helpful"? This could or should be the words I live by. Lately I have been busy with cartooning, I have been working on some patterns for a carving friend. I even pulled out the water color pencils just cause I can. You who do your own patterns know all you need is a front and side view. Sometimes depending on the size or detail you can get away with just the side view. Here is where the rub comes in.

In cartooning it is suggested that you should show movement even with something as simple as a coffee mug. In addition a straight view, either front or a side is usually not as preferred opposed to the 3/4 view. I had the opportunity to have a person in the publishing industry view some samples of mine years ago. His response was "wrong view for the viewer and there is no movement". Yeah, you tend to remember these things. This was in the 90's and I have made some modifications since then. I also have moved on from doing mostly cartooning to doing more carving, thus you and I are both here. Let me illustrate. Even though the goose is a better angle he would be considered stiff with no movement, while the coffee mug has some movement and expression. The man on the park bench is a simple side view limiting the amount of detail in the character. Let me say this lest I forget, I have always drawn for the pleasure of drawing and none of the cartoons you see would I ever discard. I loved drawing them and I still find pleasure in them
today.

But now we stand at present day and I have to go back to the 90's and begin doing side and front view. They also need to resemble each other. This is a priority in a carving pattern. So I am an old dog once again learning new tricks. Any talents I may have I have learned by trial and error. I have no training per say so I am not as diverse as I would like to be in certain areas. None the less this is where we are and what I have on my plate, and yeah, to a certain degree I love the new challenge.

 Well today I am sharing my pilot Santa ornament. I had done a few of these in the past but they all sold out at a craft show and I never posted any in my shop so this year I wanted to make sure I got a few done for my shop.

I have always had a fascination with the biplane era and always dreamed of flying one. Then in the beginning of our marriage we went down to a fly in for r/c planes and when everyone was done flying their planes and gotten something to eat a friend and co-worker of my wife's ask if we wanted to see his Stearman. Not knowing planes like my wife and the rest of the gang I thought we were going to see a basic plane.

We went over to the hanger and the hanger door began to be raised. As I gradually caught sight of the wheels my excitement began to rise. As the door raised I saw some of the wheel and then the planes legs of the landing gear then by the time the body started to come into view so did the lower wing. Yeah it was a biplane, a bright yellow Stearman biplane. Just being next to one was exciting enough but then with a bit of a grin, the owner of the plane Jeff said "Richard grab a wing and help me pull her out". Long story short before our time was over we all got a short ride up in the heavens in this wonderful open cockpit biplane. I now had firsthand knowledge of what fueled the fires for the young pilots back when aviation was in still young. It was breathtaking, truly breathtaking.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"