Airship Sirius

It's an imaginary airship, of course, it could be the main character in a story set in late nineteenth century, I don't know if I will have enough time for that.
The model is probably not definitive yet, and the name is temporary, too. Also, lighting is rather basic in these renderings.

On the traditional side, besides doing some works I can't show on this blog, I'm struggling quite a bit with colors. I'm trying to find a way to "color my drawings". Basically I want to draw, but it would be nice to integrate lines with some color. Watercolor, inks and gouache are the best candidates, but I still have to find my way.

Airship study

A study for the next image on airships - much less realistic, as you can see. I show the preliminary drawing here because I'm quite sure that the painting will be less incisive and interesting - so, why do you make a painting? Because people (including me) like colors, sometimes...

Airship Norge/2

According to some old photos, airships were carried out of hangars simply by pulling ropes. Sometimes a kind of trolley could support the airship, but I was interested in showing the magic of a giant weightless baloon being carried around.

Airship Norge

The second project I'm working on is a set of images of airships.
I'm starting with some images inspired by the explorations of Umberto Nobile in the '20s, in particular the first polar expedition with airship Norge. However I'm not claiming that my images are faithful to real facts: I'm just fantasizing on them. I will probably make some completely "imaginative" pictures in the future.

Airships are magic objects, possibly the most beautiful and poetic technological objects ever made by men. They are huge and impressive, yet "light" and "immaterial"; they look like dreams made real.

I decided to mix 3D and 2D graphics, because airships are complicated objects which need an accurate rendering, and I don't like to draw mechanical objects. I'm not really fond of 3D (I don't have much fun with it), but that seemed the best option in this case.

The airship (made with the open-source program Blender):


and some settings, on digitally painted backgrounds:

Exploration of Svalbard island (two versions, same background):



The evening before leaving


Leaving in the morning