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Painted history of hang glider design part 2

This page continues from Painted history of hang glider design part 1.

Feel free to create prints of these paintings for your own non-commercial use.

Metamorphosis

The kite-shape of Rogallo hang gliders became more of a swept wing shape during the mid- to late 1970s.

I like this painting so much, I offer two photos of it with different exposures.

My 2020 painting of a Sun IV hang glider is based on a 1975 photo by Bettina Gray of her son Bill Liscomb, who tried out many of the latest designs of the time. (The original photo includes just such a partial eclipse of the moon.) It is my second painting using acrylic on canvas and my second painting (excluding digital paintings) since 1984 or 1985.

My first rendering of the moon was OK, but I decided that it would look better if it was larger, so I repainted it.

Modern hardware including my large computer monitor and modern software makes scaling up from a tiny printed photo in magazine much easier than when I did the same in the 1970s and early 1980s.

For more about the Sun IV including artwork more directly derived from a print of Bettina Gray’s original photo, see under External links later on this page. And for a bit about Bettina Gray, see Skyhook Sunspot, 1977.

Phoenix VI

I painted this in November 2020. See Flight of the Phoenix.

Super Swallowtail

The canvas of this one, which I completed in November 2020, measures 24 x 30 inches (61 x 76 cm). I used acrylic paints. See Painting the SST 90.

The three battens outboard each side were aligned with the chord. Because those chord-wise battens prevented you from furling the sail, they had to be inserted as part of the rigging procedure and removed for de-rigging. Additionally, there were two deflexor wires on each leading edge; one horizontal and one vertical. Things were starting to get complicated.

Sky Sports Merlin

Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm) painted in March 2022: I based this painting on a photo by Stephen McCarroll of Paul Courtney in a Sky Sports Merlin at the Hang Ten World Open Hang Glider Championship, held at Escape Country, near El Toro, California, on April 10-18^th, 1976.

See Sunlit sail in the sky, 1976 for more details.

Gryphon

The Miles Wings Gryphon mark 1, in the long hot summer of 1976 in England, was a landmark in hang glider design. This depiction in acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 inches (61 x 46 cm) is my seventh painting of 2020. See Year of the Gryphon.

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This topic continues in Painted history of hang glider design part 3.

External link

More developments in Hang gliding 1975 part 2 on Hang Gliding History for more about the Sun IV and the photo on which I based my painting