Douglas Castleman
Artist Spotlight
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The artist has had an interest in aviation and space exploration history all of his life. He also has a strong passion for art and art history. It is natural for him to combine the two and produce art relating to aviation and aerospace. He strives to not only make technically accurate paintings of the aircraft, but to make the paintings artistically and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
Douglas has a degree in fine art, which helped him learn the various technical aspects of painting, but learning to paint aircraft accurately is something that only practicing for decades, as well as studying and learning directly from other aviation artists and artists in general, can really accomplish. He has an extensive and ever growing collection of digital images of aircraft (he is always going to aviation museums, airshows, etc.) for reference, an extensive aviation library, and also makes use of accurately modeled, assembled and painted plastic kits in the planning and drawing stage of creating an image, be it an oil on canvas, a watercolor, a pencil sketch, or using Corel Painter XII and now X3 and a Wacom Cintiq pressure sensitive monitor combined with a Mac Pro computer for the newer digital paintings. They all start the same, with sketches and then careful drawing before any color is applied.
He is an artist member of the American Society of Aviation Artists (ASAA), a fine organization that is dedicated to promoting aviation art as fine art, and educating the public and encouraging young artists about the subject.
Douglas is also a member of the Society of Illustrators, Los Angeles, and through that organization has been part of the Untied States Air Force Art Program.
The artist has developed a close working relationship with the fine people at the Flight Test Historical Foundation and is honored to get to meet and know many great pilots and engineers associated with that organization.
Douglas has won many awards for his aviation paintings, the most recent being "Apollo 11 Launch," second-place (space category) in the ASAA International Art Exhibit, 2012. He also had a painting, "SH-60 Seahawk" in a retrospective art exhibit that featured the best of aviation art from the past years of the ASAA. This same painting also was awarded the "Best of Show" at a regional artshow, in October, 2012.
A good place to meet the artist is the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave California, just north of Edwards AFB, off Highway 14, every third Saturday of the month for their excellent fly-in called "Plane Crazy Saturdays." The artist is almost always there displaying prints and a few originals and is very happy to meet aviation people there. Be sure to contact beforehand to be sure he will be there, because every so often the artist cannot attend.
Feel free to send any comments and/or questions to the artist's email: DNCartist@hotmail.com
