More Art

Like the recent purchase of Bell and Hughes art, I’ve just purchased from ebay two pieces of vintage McDonnell-Douglas concept art (the *actual* paintings, not reproductions) for the purpose of digitizing and preserving them. These are early 1970’s concepts for advanced fighters; the rear view is of the Model 265 AFTI submission circa 1973. The other is so far as I’m aware known solely from this painting and depicts a *tiny* fighter from 1970. I would be unsurprised if this turns out to be a concept for a fighter to be carried in some numbers by a 747 or C-5 carrier aircraft. A fighter that small shooting down a MiG 25 seems a bit optimistic.

These will be digitized and eventually donated to a good aerospace museum or archive (still inviting comments on what museum would be best… NASM, NMUSAF, Pima seem the most popular, with the Bell museum in Buffalo being an appropriate choice for the prior Bell artwork). And as with the earlier artworks, buying these was not cheap. Hell, ebay charged me more than sixty bucks just in *taxes.* Bah. So as before, if you’d like to help this project, $25 would go a long way. The “Add To Cart” button below would take care of that. If you were of a mind to, you could always hit the “quantity” button afterwards… hint, hint…

To help sweeten the deal, those who help out here will not only get the high-rez scans of the McDonnell-Douglas artwork but also professional photos I plan to obtain of the Lockheed stowed-rotor composite aircraft painting below, the very first “real” painting I purchased a few years ago.  And if you’d like to help out with the previous Bell/Hughes paintings, check HERE.