Still Colouring In - Part Two

Editor Mark Postlethwaite joined fellow professional aviation artist Nick Trudgian on an Oxford park bench to feed the ducks and reflect upon their 30 years of avoiding having to do a proper job. In this second part of the interview Nick reveals some of his trade secrets including how to transform a chimp in a frock into Emma Watson with a simple visit to Specsavers...

A much younger Nick with legendary German Ace GüntherRall who is sadly no longer with us, unlike Nick’s coatwhich is clearly still going strong!

MP So here we are, in part two of our general ramble through life as an aviation artist. We ended part one just after you left the Military Gallery and became freelance once again. Do you still publish prints?

NT Yes, we do. Just not as many. Since 2006 I have been working with a German publisher who had the foresight, an incredible 25 to 30 years ago, to collect many sheets of top quality art printing paper and then he asked many of the remaining Knight’s Crossawarded veterans to sign them. He also asked top army and submarine veterans too and he travelled far and wide to amass what is surely a unique collection of signed paper. All kept in bank vault conditions with security and climate-control, the sheets were waiting for an artist to become available, and I was! Another stroke of luck. I do one of these big German paintings per year and now the collection has covered many aspects of Luftwaffe activity as well as U-Boats and tanks. It’s a privilege to have my artwork printed on such precious sheets of paper.

For mostly non-German subjects I have co-produced many prints with British-based Vector Fine Art and in more recent years I have been painting US aviation subjects for Valor Studios. I used to get fed up with the long drive to go to Bath to sign prints for the Military Gallery, now I have to go to Denver! But they are really nice people and I usually get to see some American trains while I am there so I come home happy. There have been occasions where because of my deadlines on other projects I was in America for just 24 hours. Customs officials looked baffled when I told them how long I was staying, but at least I don’t get jet-lag doing that.

My artwork nowadays is almost entirely commissions and much of it drawing. It’s interesting to reflect how for 19 years in the Military Gallery I didn’t do any commissions at all. We designed paintings purely for print and if the originals found a buyer that was a bonus and I’d have iced buns for tea! Those days have gone. What we are left with is a hard core of collectors, genuine enthusiasts for art and aircraft. Most of them tend to buy fewer prints but, instead, they commission drawings and perhaps even an oil painting or two ( more iced buns ). That suits me because the logistics of print-selling are very demanding on space and time.

Nick’s pencil remarques are regarded by many as the best in the business. The line work, contrast and control of perspective is exceptional, especially in such a confined space as a print border. This selection of recently remarqued prints also shows Nick’s flexibility when it comes to subject matter, the Dunkirk scene at the bottom would make a great painting in itself!

MP Talking of drawings, your remarques are in my opinion (and many others’) the best in the business. Is pencil work something you’ve always enjoyed, and how do you create the remarkable clarity in your drawings? Do you have any hints and tips for artists like me who generally struggle to even keep their pencils sharp?!

NT That is really kind of you Mark. I have always loved pencil drawing and never tire of it.

How do I keep pencils sharp? Well, not with pencil sharpeners, I find they shatter the ‘lead’. Instead I use a scalpel and then put a really sharp point on the pencil by rubbing it against emery paper. I do that every couple of minutes. The once cream-coloured carpet under my desk is now dark grey.

I love drawing because it’s so elemental … just graphite on paper. Without colour to help tell the story, lighting, contrast and composition are everything. I am very fond of black and white photography and old movies for the same reason. I adore oil painting with its boundless possibilities to realistically recreate bygone scenes and moods in full colour and yet drawing is the exact opposite, beautiful because of its simplicity.

One of my many tin pot theories is that a colour painting should still work well if you drained all the colour out of it, relying solely on shades of grey. After all, light and shade describe form much more than colour does. Where my best drawings have inspired paintings I can apply the colour with confidence, knowing that the underlying structure of the scene is strong.

People said my drawings suddenly got better about ten years ago. That’s when I started wearing glasses. Ruth told me to get my eyes checked after she saw me painting a semi-nude woman, (nose-art I hasten to add), on a P-38 Lightning. She said the woman looked like a chimp in a frock from Planet of the Apes. I thought she looked a lot like a girl I used to go out with in Cornwall. Anyway, as usual, Ruth was right and the glasses proved a godsend. The ‘chimp’ was repainted to look more like Emma Watson and I did’t get eyestrain anymore.

Nick’s art now is mostly commissions with much of it in the form of pencil drawings such as this one depicting the famous encounter between Franz Stiegler and the crew of B-17 ‘Ye Olde Pub’.

In my first days with the old Military Gallery in the late 1980s, I heard them talking about ‘remarks’. I didn’t have a clue. ‘Remarques’, they told me, were original drawings added to the tint borders of a select few prints. They tended to be just slightly differing versions of the same aircraft; merely a quick sketch. They had to be brief because I was paid less than 10% of the retail price of the print to do them. Nowadays, when I only sell remarques direct to collectors, I have the opportunity to do them as proper little artworks in their own right, drawn entirely to the wishes of the collector. Some of the old remarques from my early years come back to me to be upgraded and collectors are increasingly buying those on the secondary market and asking me to add further remarques to them. Multiple remarques on one print used to be rare but doubles are now common and recently I added seven to one print. It makes rolling the print up for shipping a nerve-wracking business.

In paintings I like to see brush strokes and, similarly, in drawings I build up hundreds of parallel lines rather than ‘shading’ flat greys in the more usual way. I work like a surgeon with only the space for the drawing exposed and everything else carefully covered up. Good paper is as important as my lovely German Staedtler pencils and fortunately the paper that we use for the colour prints suits my style perfectly, making remarques a pleasure. The clay-coated surface is perfect for my technique and it also allows me to use scalpel blades to gently scratch highlights into the surface of the drawings, a bit like scraper board.

I once had to draw on a sheet signed my Richthofen and the surface was like breakfast cereal. Other paper can be like shiny bathroom tiles, almost useless. It’s extra stressful if the paper belongs to a collector and worth a fortune. I keep my coffee well away from the table on those days.

MP And back to the paintings, can you talk us through how you’d approach a typical painting? As I paint in acrylic, I tend to just throw paint onto the canvas and keep overpainting it until something reasonable appears, (not a very efficient way of painting I must admit!), whereas you use oils so you must have a clear idea of what you’re doing before you start?

NT I call it ‘slapping the paint on’ rather than ‘throwing it’ but I’ll have to try your method, it might be faster. I paint in what most people think is a back-to-front way. I do the planes first and then paint the backgrounds around them. Mad, you might say, and you’re probably right but I am too old to change now. With an aviation picture I usually start with the national insignia..RAF roundel, German cross etc. Then I work out from that. That is not at all the classical way of painting where, like you Mark, an artist usually starts by roughing in the background and then gradually pulls everything into sharper focus with successive layers of paint.

“It’s good to have some secondary interest in a picture and what better than a Messerschmitt, lying bent in the corner of an English field? The Spitfires could have been from any squadron but at the last minute they became Basil Stapleton’s 603 Squadron so that the painting could be used as the cover on his biography by David Ross. No doubt because it contained all the imagery we associate with that Battle this was one of my best selling prints. As a result of this print the Battle of Britain MemorialFlight asked me for advice as to who they should paint their MkII in Basil’s colours. Of course, I referredthem to the real expert, David, who had helped me in the first place!”

I paint in a very deliberate way because of my experience as a commercial artist painting in gouache. That thick, water-based paint is ideal for tight deadlines because it dries so quickly. There wasn’t time to build up layers of paint, instead, usually one layer was applied and it had to be right first go. I once started a commercial illustration at 5 a.m. after working all the way through the night on other projects. The painting was finished by 8 a.m. picked up by motorbike courier and the image was ‘on press’ in a London print works before lunch. We were paid for speed as much as quality. I couldn’t cope with that stress now.

Mosquitos of No.464 Squadron RAAF disturb the timeless tranquility of an English coastal village as they head out towards the Continent on another low-level mission.

Interestingly, that illustration, which was for a General Motors advertisement, paid twice as much for just three hours’ work as I’d earn for the 5 weeks it took back then for one of my 3ft wide oil paintings of planes or trains! Despite the relatively poor earnings from oil painting it was still my dream and I pursued it alongside the commercial work.

MP Didn’t you once tell me about some of the difficult people you painted trains for?

NT Oh yes, there was one man who commissioned me to paint a big oil painting for £650 that took me six weeks, but when it was finished he told me he wanted to have it for nothing! He liked it and wanted to make prints from it, but he wouldn’t pay me even a penny because, instead, I would have ‘good publicity’. He told me it was a life-lesson and I should thank him... I sold the painting to someone else. Then there was another man who told me he really didn’t like the painting I had done for him and wasn’t willing to pay for it. He didn’t even want me to modify it, which pleased me because it was, honestly, the most successful picture I had painted up to that time.

So, instead, I exhibited the painting at a railway art show where a lovely couple asked to buy it. Out of a misguided sense of professionalism I let the first man know what I intended to do and then, lo and behold, he blew his top and insisted he have the painting after all.

The happy outcome was that the nice couple commissioned me each year to paint a different railway scene … anything I wanted! They actually weren’t railway enthusiasts at all, they just liked art and artists. There’s the life-lesson. To all who dream of becoming an artist, it can be a bumpy road, but be true to yourself and so long as you stick at it, the good times will come. You just need a thick skin sometimes.

MP When I start a painting I usually load eleven different colours on my pallette, which usually means I’m ready for a tea before I even apply any of it to canvas! What does your pallette look like?

Well, again I am very weird. My landscape and sky backgrounds are painted with just three colours … lemon yellow, rose pink and blue, with white paint to make colours paler. No matter whether I am painting a hot desert or freezing winter, moonlight or sunsets, those three colours allow me to mix up any tone and hue I wish. Being ‘cool’ colours they automatically create naturally distant hues and with such a limited palette it’s impossible to mix a colour that’s out of place. I haven’t owned a tube of green or purple for 30 years, it’s much more interesting to mix them up.

The exception to my rule is when I paint the main subject of the painting, usually the nearest aeroplane. Then I do use brighter, warmer colours … flame red, bright orange and yellow and very dark brown, and they create a wonderful 3D effect. The main subject seems to leap out of the scene because of its livelier warmth and contrast.

”Hurriedly sent by General Eisenhower to defend the town ‘at all costs’ the 101st Airborne Division put upa valiant defence despite being greatly outnumbered. This is one of the prints I have done for Valor Studiosin Denver. My good friend Andy Keenan built all the models for me and they probably took just as long as the painting took to paint, but I really enjoyed this one. It’s always a great pleasure to meet the veteransand for this print I did a signing in Philadelphia with Edward “Babe” Heffron, one of the 101st’s famous“Band of Brothers”. Sadly, he died just a short time afterwards.”

MP How does being an independent aviation artist in 2019 compare with being part of the world conquering Military Gallery business back in the 1990s?

NT The thing that baffled me when I first worked full time in aviation art was the desire by the Military Gallery to keep us artists away from the people who bought the art. It’s true that we attended occasional air shows, even gallery tours of the US and Canada, but not very often. There seemed to be a belief that an artist should be in an ivory tower, surrounded by mystery. Even those people that bought original oil paintings were, it seemed, kept at a distance. I can sort of see why the publishers did it. Perhaps I’m mangling that old saying, “It’s better that people think you might be an idiot than open your mouth and prove it”. Maybe publishers thought it best that collectors thought we were something special rather than meeting us and finding out how normal we were. I bent the ‘house rules’ by replying in person to those people who were kind enough to write in with compliments, and criticisms. The very first collector I replied to was Nick Maue who subsequently became a close friend and has helped me with research on every single project, right up to today. I shudder to think how many errors I would have made had I not bothered to reply to his letter all those years ago.

“Being an early one, the prints were graced with some fabulous German signatures and today are hard to find. In research for this painting I discovered that the Caucasus Mountains are even higher than the Alps so here we have Dieter Hrabak’s JG52 looking for trouble among the high peaks in late 1942.”

Today, with the market smaller and collectors more particular about what they want, it’s essential that artists have direct contact with them, and also the dealers and gallery owners kind enough to stock our artwork and prints. Let’s face it, nobody actually needs art in the same was as they need clothes or food, but by having artists who are accessible it creates a world-wide community of like-minded aviation art enthusiasts, furthering what is still for many people a rewarding hobby and a welcome distraction from everyday life.

MP The Aviation Art market has changed beyond all recognition now with WWII veterans no longer available to sign prints, how do you see the business nowadays?

NT Of all aviation artists it’s very appropriate that I am having this chat with you Mark. We have known each other for so long, have much in common and yet our experiences of the industry have almost been polar opposites. You have, through a lot of hard work, independently built a fabulous reputation on very solid ground that nobody can shake. I on the other hand, put my career in the hands of a big publisher, gambling that with their energetic promotion I would make enough of a name for myself before the wind changed. Having taken different paths we find ourselves today in similar circumstances with a print market that is no longer the driving force of our industry. The publishers I now work with have an enlightened attitude to artists. That mutual respect and a dash of humility from me are essential because these days the quality of a print matters much more than the name of the artist who painted it.

The relatively few but very well known artists of the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s enjoyed a degree of notoriety that we are unlikely to see again. As with the music industry back in the 1960s, just a small handful of publishers dominated the market and chose who got promoted and who didn’t. In the painting world there were many artists with very great ability who didn’t accept, or weren’t accepted by, what now seems an archaic regime. I remind myself how lucky I was to be taken on as the ‘second artist’ by the all-powerful Military Gallery in the latter part of that phenomenon. I received nearly 20 years of promotion, following in the wake of Robert Taylor, another very lucky person. We were part of a ‘print making machine’ and I believe we were both content to concentrate on the art while other people handled the logistics and our publicity. Despite that wonderful legup, here in 2019 I cannot rest on my laurels. I have to be as much on top of my game as I ever was.

”For those who like all forms of vintage transport there’s an MG sports car, bus and train in this one.It was later used for a jigsaw puzzle and all those details proved popular. This is supposed to be ruralSussex although the station is actually based on one in east Devon with architecture, paint colours and train modified to be accurate. The station name boards have been painted black to prevent spies knowingwhere they were. Could they be that dim? The Hurricanes are from No.601, the ‘Millionaires’ Squadron.”

MP And do you have any advice for ‘up and coming’ artists ( I remember we were called that 30 years ago… now we’re more down and out! )

NT If I were starting from scratch today I would do aviation art part-time, at least at first. I would find a way of earning a living with a pension scheme, ( sore point ), and then paint just what I wanted to paint in my own time. The best art usually comes that way. Then I’d get a website and make digital prints. Perhaps for some, digital painting would be more exciting than working with actual paint. The only down side with that is that collectors still love having actual artwork on their wall. But there’s no denying that digital painting can be utterly breathtaking in its ability to create superb imagery.

ALPINE THUNDER 2002. Having retreated into the Austrian mountains and now flying from their base at Salzburg, Me262s of Adolf Galland’s JV44 scorch over an alpine lake in April 1945. The nearest aircraft is the unique Me262 flown by Oberstleutnant Heinz Bar, armed with a 30mm cannon in the nose. A P47 Thunderbolt shot down on this sortie brought Bar’s final total to 16, making him the most successful of the Luftwaffe jet pilots. “The strange thing about this painting was that I really didn’t like it at all while I was doing it. Oil paintings sometimes control me as much as I control them and this one led me down its own peculiar path. Now, looking back, it’s one of my favourites.”

MP How do you think we old timers fit into this new market place with young artists and new techniques like digital art coming on stream? Is it a threat to traditional painting.

NT The biggest threat to representational painters like us was the invention of photography in the early 19th century and yet here we are getting on for 200 years later and people still want pencil and paint, or prints of those things, on their walls. I am a bit worried because my ‘party piece’ is dramatic and transient lighting. That’s tricky to do in paint, literally taking a lifetime to try to master it, but now there is software that can render images of virtually any lighting conditions you wish. Soon, it’ll be at the press of a button. But, you still need the traditional skills of the artist in order to create the whole composition, to capture a moment in time and give the viewer more than just the sum of its parts.

”As far as I am aware I was the first artist to paint the Mohne Dam’s attack from the perspective of a German. In research for this painting, a gunner, who was up on one of the dam’s towers that night, said how the moon was so bright that if the Lancasters hadn’t been shooting at him he wouldn’t have known where to shoot back. A year after I painted this I visited the actual spot. Having spent so long painting the scene I had the strongest sense of deja vu I have ever experienced. The road surface and the capping stones of the parapet have all been changed since the night of the raid.”

Also, and it may just be me being weird again, even with some of the best CGI special effects in movies I feel a little hollow and unconvinced. Take the 1960s children’s TV show ‘Thunderbirds’ with its puppets and flying machines dangling on strings. We were obliged to complete the picture in our minds, ignoring the strings and the firework pyrotechnics and yet somehow the end result was more real. But, having said all of that, it is wonderful to be able to create exciting imagery on a computer and it’ll only get more exciting. Whatever approach an artist takes the future will also require business and self promotional skills. They don’t come easy to many artists, myself included. But it’s an exciting time when the internet, social media and digital printing mean that artists can run a publishing business from home.

“The Battle of the Bulge, one of my favourite themes, and this time from the German point of view with ‘King Tigers’ and ‘Panthers’ of Joachim Peiper’s armoured spearhead, deep in the snow blanketed and difficult terrain of the Ardennes at Christmas 1944. Of course, it came to a grinding halt as the fuel and ammunition ran out but it showed that the Germans would not give up easily. I like painting snow and went to town on this one. My studio is freezing in winter and too hot in summer so I contrive to paint snow scenes in August and tropical scenes in winter…it’s a lot cheaper than having air-conditioning or heaters!”

MP Well, having fed every duck in the immediate vicinity, it’s probably time we headed back to our respective pensionless homes to work until we die. On that cheery note, do you have any unfulfilled ambitions in aviation art?

NT Yes, the ducks have done well today. They clearly like iced buns too.

Ambitions? I’d like to paint more of the rarer aircraft types. I am hoping to do a Henschel 129 this coming year and some more WWI subjects. Generally though, my ambition is to get better at painting and drawing rather than worse. There is a tendency among some creative people to live off past glories, to expect people to buy their stuff even though it’s no longer what it once was. How often do we go to concerts and wish the band would play the hits from their glory days instead of the stuff off their new album?

Ruth and I have an agreement that if I get like that she should whack me on the head with a shovel. Worryingly, she spends a lot more time in the tool shed than she used to.

I have never tired of the exhilarating feeling of starting a new painting and there are still so many aviation subjects to paint. And I want to paint other things too. I really like tanks and ships and there are quite a few trains I’d like to paint. It’s endless. And, without that pension, what choice have I got?

To end with a cliche, my best picture is the one in my head, usually the next picture, which somehow never quite turns out as well as I’d wish. And that’s what keeps me going. Plus, ‘colouring in’ is still great fun. It’s not like having a proper job is it, so, on a nice day like this, we get to meet up and feed the ducks. Now what about that beer you mentioned…