Colours and Markings of the World's Air Forces 1912-1920

Since 1989, I have been working on various profiles of First World War aircraft. At first these were to 1/48 scale and done in watercolour on 5x8 files cards. A letter from the future publisher of Flying Machines Press to WW1 Aero in 1992 led to my contacting him about my work and his suggestion that I should think about getting published. However I felt I was not ready to devote the time needed to do justice to such an idea, therefore I just kept on adding to my collection for my own use – by 1996 there were 1100 of them.

When the FMP A-H book arrived in 1993 I immediately phoned Jack and complimented him on it, his reply was to ask if I was goiing to the 1994 OTF seminar in Ottawa. At that point I hadn't even thought of it. A remark by a friend of mine that I would never go led me to book a ticket (thanks Debbie). I brought all my profiles in the hope I could show them off to anyone I could entice to view them, but I had no thought on displaying them properly and fully expected to spend my time in a corner of the room talking to no one. Luckily there was an unoccupied table at the reception, so I put them out for viewing and stood back to see what comments they would generate. I made many new friends through them that I feel I never would have otherwise.

In 1996 they were once again on display – this time by design – and I began to feel I should share them with a wider audience, so upon returning home I did a 1/24 profile and sent it to FMP and OTF. FMP offered me a book deal, OTF liked the idea I had for an article and I began to work on what would become "More Than Could Be Reasonably Anticipated". In the meantime they published another idea I had as a last minute filler and also used my work on the rear cover of 12/1, this led to other rear cover profile work which continues to this day for OTF, C&C(INT) and Windsock.

The next step was to acquire a new Mac and to begin profile work on the computer. I am truly amazed at what can be accomplished using the computer. As much as I love painting by hand, I also enjoy doing illustrations on computer now and welcome the ability to quickly make changes that would have taken hours to do in the past.

This CD represents over ten years of most enjoyable research/work on my part – or, as I like to say "many hours of good music and bad TV". However this is not the end, in fact I intend to constantly be updating and correcting the contents herein and welcome any information that you may have that may be relevant to it. I am particularily interested in illustrating aircraft not seen before, and would love to include more on future releases.

Bob Pearson
July 2000