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That chrome throwback scheme

Posted on October 21, 2016 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

(Photo by CG AUX Bob Trapani)

U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod and Coast Guard Station Rockland Me training with an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and 47-foot motor life boats.

The Jayhawk helicopter is painted yellow to represent the “chrome” yellow paint scheme that Coast Guard and Navy helicopters used in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Examples include the Sikorsky HO3S-1G used from 1946 to 1955 and the Sikorsky HO4S used from 1951 to 1966.

It is one of 16 aircraft in the country during the centennial celebration of Coast Guard aviation. Altogether, three different Coast Guard aircraft types, including the Jayhawk and Dolphin helicopters as well as the HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane, are receiving historic paint schemes representing various eras of Coast Guard air power.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Ken Smith

Posted on December 28, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors and the like that produce them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Ken Smith

While I often cover artists who are no longer with us, Smith is very much still current.

According to Radford University:

Smith currently resides in Pulaski, Virginia and is an assistant professor of graphic design at Radford University. Before this, he lived in the Knoxville area for over thirty years and is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee. He also holds a MA from Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York) and an MFA from the University of Hartford (Hartford, Connecticut). He is a member of the Coast Guard Art Program and has twice won their prestigious George Grey Award of Artistic Excellence. His paintings are featured at both the East Tennessee Historical Society and the McClung Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee, as well as at Fort Loudoun State Historic Area museum in Vonore, Tennessee.

Without further interruption:

USCG Photo: 1090892
Each year the United States Coast Guard recognizes one artist from among that year’s many submissions to the Coast Guard Art Program (COGAP) to receive the coveted George Gray Award for Artistic Excellence. 2009s recipient was Radford University professor Ken Smith for his painting, Air Station Savannah, depicting AET2 Taylor Anderson (Avionics Electrical Technician) pausing in her work aboard the HH-65 Dolphin helicopter at Coast Guard Air Station Savannah, near Savannah, Georgia. This painting has been on loan to the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago for years. (Click to big up)

Potential Coast Guard artists apply for acceptance into the COGAP program, and if accepted, are then allowed to submit works for possible inclusion in the Coast Guard’s Permanent Art Collection. The 2009 additions to the collection include 34 works by 19 artists. Of these, one work is selected to receive the George Gray Award for Artistic Excellence. Smith’s painting, Air Station Savannah, was granted this honor for 2009. A long time participant in the Coast Guard Art Program for the past two years, Smith was one of only six artists who were chosen for official Coast Guard Artist deployment in 2008, from which the painting Air Station Savannah was created.

Smith also won the GGAAE for “MSST: Sighting Down Threats” which shows a Maritime Safety and Security Team (MSST) from St. Marys, Georgia is shown securing an area of the port as an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter prepares to drop crew members onto a tanker to determine whether the vessel is engaged in illegal activity or otherwise poses a threat.

USCG Photo 1107375
Ken Smith Pulaski, Va. Oil. Members of the Maritime Safety and Security Team (MSST) in St. Marys, Ga., secure an area of the port as an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter moves in on a tanker on which crew failed to provide identification. Poised in the doorway of the helicopter are crew members who will be dropped by vertical insertion onto the tanker to investigate whether the vessel is engaged in illegal activity or otherwise poses a threat. Each MSST member on the ground sights his MK-18 M-4 carbine rifle in a different direction. (Click to big up)

“My paintings generally tend toward military subject matter, so I was naturally attracted to the MSSTs and their anti-terrorism mission,” said Smith. “In discussing their work… [the team’s] no-nonsense attitude really appealed to my sense of drama and of course to the idea of Semper Paratus. It also had a bit of a Star Trek flavor that I find pretty irresistible.” -Smith told USCG Media Affairs

Ken Smith’s new painting, Steady As She Goes, has been accepted into the permanent collection of the U.S. Coast Guard. In the artwork a U.S. Coast Guard service member aboard the Cutter Hollyhock steadies the hoist hook used to deploy oil skimming equipment during a multi-agency and international contingency exercise on the Detroit River. The exercise aims to enhance cooperation and coordinate response to possible oil spills and other environmental mishaps among different agencies. The cutter is a 225-foot seagoing buoy tender.

Besides Coast Guard works, he is well versed in other subjects of military history.

” At First Light” THE GWINNETT ARTILLERY at the BATTLE of FORT SANDERS. By Ken Smith

“Kollaa Holds!” by Ken Smith

“Abashed the devils stood” By Ken Smith

Oh Comrades, come rally the battle of Boridino. By Ken Smith

Oh Comrades, come rally the battle of Borodino. By Ken Smith

More on Smith: Please visit his Gallery, Blog, and tumblr.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The martial art of Romain Hugault

Posted on October 26, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

If you are a fan of modern aviation art, you know the work of Monsieur Romain Hugault. While a relative youngster (born in 1979) his work has gained international acclaim. The son of a military pilot, he earned his own pilot’s license at age 17.

Romain Hugault himself

With his first work, Le Dernier Envol, was published in 2005. Since then he hasn’t turned back and in the past decade has become a favorite aircraft illustrator of airshow posters, calendars, military prints and the like. Known for his illustrated novels Le Pilote à l’Edelweiss, and Le Grand Duc, his blog is http://romain-hugault.blogspot.com/ and his website http://www.romainhugault.com/#!/home

Russian Polikarpov I-153 Chaika (seagull) by Romain Hugault

Romain Hugault poster

Romain Hugault’s P-47 “Busty Angel”

Rafael calendar illustration

by Romain Hugault

By Romain Hugault

AVG pilots inspecting a L-2 Grasshopper in SE Asia by Romain Hugault

Combat Gallery Sunday: The martial art of Alex Colville

Posted on September 14, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

David Alexander Colville was born 24 Aug 1920 in Toronto. A young man when WWII erupted in 1939, he enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1942 upon graduation from Mount Allison University. Serving in Northwestern Europe with the 3rd Canadian Division, he was made an official war artist in 1944, He landed in Southern France, saw action in Nijmegen during Market Garden (where his unit relieved the 82nd Airborne) and continued into Germany, where he saw first hand the horror of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

His works for the military were gritty and showed the hand of a man familiar with the subject matter as he was actively submerged in it.

Infantry, near Nijmegen (Canadian War Museum No. 12172), a 40″ x 48″ canvas depicting soldiers of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division trudging along a Dutch polder, is a well-known image which hangs in the museum.

After the war, he went back to Mount Allison and taught art for nearly twenty years before turning to painting full time. His works are very distinctive.

Man on Verandah 1953, painted while on staff at Mount Allison. Image by http://alexcolville.ca/

Pacific, 1967. This scene with a beautifully detailed Browning Hi-Power 9mm (Coleville would have carried a similar one in Europe in 1944) inspired one of the definitive scenes in the 1995 film Heat with actor Robert De Niro. Photo by http://alexcolville.ca/

De Niro’s HK USP is just behind him off camera on the table, Photo by IMFDB

In the Woods, 1976 acrylic polymer. A very nice and accurate study of how cold it must be to shoot a SIG P210 classic pistol in the Canadian woods in winter. The second glove is in the shooter’s mouth. Took me a minute to realize that too.

He also produced the images on the Canadian 1867-1967 centennial commemorative coin set for the government and many of his paintings were reproduced as postage stamps.

In 1982, Alex Colville donated his remaining wartime drawings and sketches to the Canadian War Museum to join those that had already become part of the War Art Collection. These were works that he had not been required to hand over to Canadian War Records officials. The Museum now holds 371 works on paper by this artist.

Colville died 16 July 2013 at age 92, and we are lesser for it.

The official website for Colville is here

Combat Gallery Sunday: The martial art of Norem

Posted on August 24, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Born in April 1924, a young man by the name of Earl Norem found himself as part of the first unit in the U.S. military trained to fight modern warfare in the mountains. This group, the famed 10th Mountain Division, became Earl’s home once he joined the U.S. Army in World War Two.

The 10th Mountain saw hard combat up and down the Italian boot at places like the North Apennine Mountains, where their training came in handy. In those craggy peaks men fought hand-to-hand, waist deep in snow at times. The 10th participated in some of the last bayonet charges of that war, clearing the mountains one inch at a time. Norem was a 20-year old squad leader. His war ended with a wound picked up in the madness that was the Po Valley.

Coming home after the conflict, he became an illustrator. Using acrylics, he crafted work for Marvel on the early Silver Surfer (Kirby’s, you know, the only real Silver Surfer) and on books in the He-Man, Tales of the Zombie and Planet of the Apes.

If it wasnt for Norem, the Damned Dirty Apes may not have ever made it to the big screen

Nice British Lanchester SMG

Well old Norem also gave pulps a try and did a great job,

Perhaps the widest submarine ever, but hey, Norem is a mountain troop, not a bubblehead.

Perhaps the widest submarine ever, but hey, Norem is a mountain trooper, not a bubblehead. More importantly, what is going on in that forward torpedo room?

Why yes those are zombies…in a hurricane…in a life raft…what else could it be?

Pesky Nazis hiding out in South America was a reoccurring theme in 1960s pulp. You also have to love the fact that the SS oberts still has his boots on but no pants.