“Colors of the Sky”
This poster series is my love letter to planes and the world of aviation. As the daughter of two US Air Force veterans and a childhood spent at the Pima Air and Space Museum, planes and history have always been in my life and in my heart. Although these military planes are mainly built for waging war, I’ve always seen them for the beauty of their designs and the amazing maneuvers they can pull in the sky, or even the long history of the plane itself.
F-22 Raptor
The F-22 is currently the most feared plane in the world, and red is often the color associated with violence and war, which is what most people first think when seeing it. Yet red is also the color of love, and whenever I see this beautiful plane performing maneuvers as graceful as a dancer, I fall in love all over again.
A-10 Warthog
Orange is the color of the desert and the A-10 is the master of the desert, both in its long term of service and in Tucson itself. At least once a day, you can see the A-10 flying over the University on its landing pattern back to Davis-Monthan AFB, and it never fails to make me smile. The A-10 will always remind me of the desert, and thus remind me of home.
F/A-18 Super Hornet
One of two Navy planes in this series, and the F/A-18 is famous in its starring role in Top Gun: Maverick. It’s a beautiful plane that will always make me think of the ocean and the beach, and with its nickname as the Super Hornet, I couldn’t resist making it represent the color yellow. Especially as they are currently the plane of choice for the Navy’s Blue Angels, which have beautiful yellow accents on their paint schemes.
P-51 Mustang
The hero of the skies in the Second World War. The plane I drew is the P-51D variant, as my dad was quick to remind me- and in its introduction to the war, it dominated the skies and helped ensure an allied victory. I volunteer in a World War Two museum (the 390th Memorial Museum), so I had to include this beautiful hero in my thesis. These planes could take off and land in the grass, so what better than to have them represent the color green?
F-14 Tomcat
The other Navy plane in this series, and the star of the original Top Gun movie. It might be blasphemous for me to say it, as someone born with an Air Force lineage, but the Navy really made an amazing plane with the F-14. The wings on this plane can actually move in and out and are truly amazing to see. Plus, as the famous Top Gun plane, how could I not give it the color blue: the color of the ocean.
F-15 Eagle
The F-15 is one of the most famous planes in the world, as it has never been shot down before and was considered the deadliest plane in the skies until the F-22 came along. The F-15 also has the legendary brag that it is the only plane to have shot down a satellite (there’s a photo of it- look it up!), so I had to put the F-15 in a night time setting, and the color purple just seemed to suit it too well.