Jump back for a moment to 2007. I was sketching out ideas for another Lafayette Escadrille piece. One of the ideas that I presented to the client involved a formation of Lafayette Escadrille SPADs flying along against a dawn sky. The client passed up on that one, but I liked the idea and so I kept it in the back of my head for future use.
Not long afterwards, my wife and I took a trip to San Diego. On the early morning flight out of Charlotte I turned and shot this great sunrise photo out the window of the airplane. Once I got back home I added it to my "background" files. I really liked the photo, but strangely enough, I made no mental connection between it and the LE sketch from a couple of months prior.
Fast forward to 2010. I recently started work on a series of small oil originals to sell and to add to my body of work. After tackling Richthofen's Albatros DII and an Etrich Taube I decided that the next aircraft I wanted to depict was a Nieuport 17. I chose Raoul Lufbery as my subject as he is one of my favorite pilots from WW1 and I had been wanting to use him as a subject for a long time. My plan was to make this a simple, small painting depicting the one aircraft against a nice backdrop.
I purchased the Academy 1/32 scale Nieuport 17 and took it out early in the morning for some reference shots. I got back home a began looking at the photos on my computer and suddenly remembered my sunrise background photo that I had taken 3 years prior.
Long story short - in a flurry of activity, I did some photo manipulation on my background photo and worked out the perspectives for not 1, but 3 Lafayette Escadrille N17s - Lufbery, Thaw and Hill. Furthermore, as I began work I realized that I had a a stretcher AND a frame that would fit these proportions... if I blew the image up to 40" x 18.5"! What had originally started out as a small quick project has quickly become a a large, involved project!
Well, I finished this one up last week. Somehow I managed to suppress my "shiny object syndrome" and stay focused long enough to crank this one out quickly so that it wouldn't interfere to badly will my other commitments.
By the Dawn's Early Light
Lafayette Escadrille members Lufbery, Thaw and Hill on a morning patrol over the Western Front, late autumn, 1916.
oil on linen
40" x 18.5"
