Get your head in the clouds.

While Candice and Remo were out of town I was a busy lad. I have been wanting to do a mural in Rems room since before he was born. It would have been nearly impossible to do with Candice here. We would have fought over the color of the sky for months, let alone types and positions of clouds and aircraft. (We are both rather stubborn) I wanted to do an "above the clouds" theme. I thought it would be cool to do an evolution of aviation.
Here are some distance shots.





The first wall has Da Vinci's sketch of a helicopter, or helical air screw, drawn in 1490. Next to that is the Montgolfier Brothers balloon that was used in the fist manned ascent in France, 1783. Next to that is the first Zeppelin flight.

Otto Lilienthal was a brave man, or just plain crazy. He invented hang gliders in the late 1800's. Next to his gliders is the famous Wright Brothers first powered manned flight at Kitty Hawk.

Here is the infamous Red Barron in a dogfight.

Spirit of St. Louis and the first modern helicopter built by Igor Sikorsky.

German Messerschmitt BF 109s about to get whooped by P51s escorting B17 Flying Fortresses on a bombing run. The P51's are painted in the colors of the Tuskeegee Airmen.

A P38 Lightning in a fight with Japanese Zeros

The Saturn V Rocket taking the Apollo astronauts into space.

Astronauts returning to Earth. An F14 Tomcat chasing a Mig 15. UH-1 Iroquois (Huey) helicopter.

Just for fun.

F-117 Stealth


R44, Universal Helicopters colors. This is one of the helicopters I flew in training.

F22 Raptor, the Air Forces latest and greatest.

The new Tilt Rotor V-22 Osprey, a helicopter and airplane. Very cool.

In honor of our friend Brian Bankhead. An ERJ-145xr that he flew for Continental Express.

Here is the aircraft I fly. A bell 407 painted just like mine.


This has been a fun project. It took me a solid week, probably 50 hours or so. I pulled two all-nighters and discovered energy drinks. I have never really painted anything before. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do more murals when we have more kids. I encourage everyone to give it a try. I just bought a set of acrylic paints and some brushes. It cost less than 100 bucks for everything. If you don't like the way it turns out, oh well, just paint over it and try again. I did one other thing in his room, I will post about that tonight.