Page 102 - EAA78.Newsletter.Archives.(February.2017-July.2021)

CHAPTER CHATTER, EAA Chapter 78 5

While a long line of interested public waited to
climb inside Aluminum Overcast for ground
tours, Stahr set up shop on a portable
scaffolding and went to work, using a technique
generally called “bulletin painting” common
in the sign industry. “Although the ‘Vargas
Girl look’ is a very stylized and slick
illustration which uses delicate airbrush
rendering with very fine details, those
airbrush tools were not commonly found
on English countryside airfields where
these B-17s were based in World War II,”
Stahr said. “The spirit in which I am
approaching this restoration of the existing
artwork is not to change it, but to recreate
it using the same tools and paints that
could have been used back in the ’40s to
capture the authentic look of bomber nose
art.”

During the first two days of the nose art
restoration, Stahr had to work through winds
gusting to 20 knots that would at times blow
the paint right off his brush’s bristles while
keeping an eye on thunderstorms skirting the
airport. The conditions only added to the artist’s
feeling of doing the job in as historically
accurate a way as possible. “In retrospect,
these are likely the same conditions that young
aviation artists had to work in out on the grass
strips in the English countryside, squeezing in
some nose art painting between sorties as the
young B-17 crews were delivering fire and rain
to the Germans, so I am definitely feeling the
nostalgia,” Stahr said.