PAINTING THE USS FORRESTAL

When I was visiting Arnold Fine Art in Newport RI a few years ago, the owner, Bill Rommel took me on a tour of the harbour and United States Naval Base.  We were able to sail up to the USS Forrestal and her sister ship the USS Saratoga.  Both ships had been mothballed and were awaiting final disposition.  I took several photos of both ships and planned to do a painting of them when I returned home.   I put the reference material away and every so often added material to the folder.  In the fall of 2007 I heard that there were plans to sink both ships as artificial reefs off the shore of South Carolina.  That prompted me to start on this project.  I selected the USS Forrestal as she was the first ‘modern’ aircraft carrier built after the war.  My original idea was to paint it in the sad condition that I had seen it in Newport, but I decided that I wanted to show the ship when she was still in service and not as the shadow of her former self.

When you decide to paint something that represents an actual thing or historical event, it involves a lot of research. This work must be done before even starting the rough drawings.  Luckily today with the internet, things that would have taken forever can be done with a keystroke.  I found a good number of reference photos on various websites and was even able to view movies UTube movies of the ship sailing. I also emailed former sailors who had served on the Forrestal and they shared their knowledge with me.  I bought a book on-line that was designed for model makers that had excellent photos showing many details of the ship. One night there was a documentary on television and I rapidly grabbed my digital camera and took several photos from the screen.  These were of poor quality but did provide me with information on the superstructure and the main masts.  The documentary also allowed me to see how the ship moved through the water and to observe the bow wave and wake.  I purchased a plastic model kit and used it to study views of the ship from different angles. This enabled me to study the sculptural qualities of the ship.  I photographed the model and compensated for the distortion using Photoshop.

With all the homework completed, I then started to do quick pencil studies trying out different viewpoints and compositions.  These are the first working drawings, and you can see where I tried different viewpoints and adjusted the composition and format with coloured markers.  The area within the orange outline shows the final composition I decided on.  I hadn’t wanted to do a regular plan or full hull view but rather to try and show the massive size and majesty of the ship.

Once the final composition was decided, I started to do detailed drawings using my reference material.  One of the major concerns was the radar and communications mast.  The USS Forrestal had entered service in 1954 and served until 1993.  Over that time the telecommunications and radar systems had changed, and with each change, old equipment was removed and new installed.  The ship was constantly changing.  I picked the time frame of 1973 when the ship was deployed in the Mediterranean Sea for this painting.

Once I had the detail drawings complete, I then concentrated on colour.  I did colour studies in gouache.  I had already planned to depict the ship at sunset but decided to see how it would look in other lighting conditions.  It is always a good idea to try other options before making a final commitment.   These ‘roughs’ are just that: rough!  Each one took only about five or ten minutes to do.  I took the original drawing and scanned it and then printed it with my laser printer on standard office paper.  You must use a laser printer for this as the ink used in the inkjet printer is water soluble and will blend in with your paint.  Using copies of your drawings and then painting over them with gouache or acrylic is a very fast way of trying different colour  and value options without having to redraw the image each time.

When I decided on the final colour scheme, I did a small colour rough using the actual oil colours that I would be using for the painting.  This oil rough is about 4 x 6 inches and was done on a canvas pad.

I liked the result so I completed this more finished study to use as a guide for the actual painting.

All this preparation might seem to be a lot of wasted time but it isn’t.   By the time I had completed these preliminary steps I had solved every major problem that I would face:   composition,  value, –colour and drawing.  The final painting was a ‘piece of cake’ and I didn’t get any nasty surprises!

This is the painting after about a day’s work.  I had drawn in the larger shapes, not the details and had started to block in the large masses of colour and tone for the sea and the sky.  This application of paint was kept very thin so that adjustments could easily be made later.

I then added a heavier application of paint to the sky and water and started to work on the details of the mast and superstructure.   I have taped the drawings to the painting with masking tape so that I can easily see them while painting.

At this stage everything is covered with paint with the exception of the superstructure of the ship.  The large areas of tone are established and also the larger details.  The water is still wet and I will paint into this layer with a more full-bodied paint to create the movement of the water.  I will glaze larger areas to provide the shadow on the hull and to fine-tune details.  The final work was done by adding lights on the water with impasto paint and adjusting the values of the ship by darkening by glazing and adding impasto paint to the lights.  The final touch was adding the United States flag to the mast.  This was a detail I had to check as I wanted to make sure that it would still be flying just before sunset.  I was told that it came down ‘with the sun’.