Week 4 RB 66 posted at 9 a.m. Oh Yeah!!!!!

acrylic on canvas 36" x 48"

So this week, I couldn't help myself I had to finish my airplane series before moving on. Also I needed to get the last of the very large canvases out of my garage before I drove into them parking my car. I've had those 3 canvases sitting in my garage for a few months now, so I am thrilled that my painting a week experiment has allowed me to finish up this project.

This weeks plane is an RB 66, the last airframe that my mother-in-law's father flew, Col. Malcom Collins. I'm posting a little bit of information that I looked up on this plane. This was the only one that I'm not that familiar with, but after doing research I guess I have seen one in person because they have one at the Air Museum in Ohio, which by the way if you are in Dayton you must go and see the museum, it is pretty spectacular.

RB-66s were used as the major night photo-reconnaissance aircraft of the USAF during this period.(1956) 72 of the B-66B bomber version were built, 69 fewer than originally planned. Thirteen B-66B aircraft later were modified into EB-66B electronic countermeasures aircraft for the Vietnam War. Unlike the Navy's A-3 Skywarrior, which performed some bombing missions, the Destroyer was not used as a bomber in Vietnam.

The RB-66C was a specialized electronic reconnaissance and ECM aircraft with an expanded crew of seven, including additional electronics warfare experts. 36 of these aircraft were built with the additional crewmembers housed in what was the camera/bomb bay of other variants. RB-66C aircraft had distinctive wingtip pods and were used in the vicinity of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later over Vietnam. In 1966, these were redesignated EB-66C.

Since I'm sharing a little more info on the planes I failed to mention that my first painting the C 17 I have actually flown on. In Charleston they do a really neat spouse flight. They fly a small group, around 20 of us, to a near by air strip, where we got off the plane had a nice lunch and then they proceeded to give us our own private air show. It was very cool! They dropped stuff out of the back of the plane, told us all the facts and did as many tricks as a large plane can do. It was all very impressive. On the way back we were supposed to have the back open so that we could fly over the ocean and see the Charleston landscape, but unfortunately our plane had hydraulic problems and we weren't able to see this. Still all in all a once in a lifetime experience. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a pilot and fly all of the time, pretty amazing!

So this wraps up my airplane paintings. Now I have to figure out what to paint next. Oh and I am proud of myself that is 9:26 a.m. and I am posting my painting. Yeah, me I finished early:)

Steven has been a water coloring fool. He painted several paintings this week. He did have a painting last week, but in my haste to just get a painting on here I didn't have time to photograph it and put it on here. So this week I will put two "series" that he painted. I must say they are beautiful. I like them so much I may frame a few. These are all watercolor on paper 11" x 14".





See everyone next week!