The Aviation Art Of Keith Ferris
(1978 - Peacock Press / Ballantine Books)

This is part of a nice set of paperback artbooks, longer than they are tall, roughly 9-by-11 inches, each 96 pages, presenting their color plates in 'museum' fashion, usually with the blank facing page holding a respectful caption of title, original size, medium, collection or source. In this particular book, the captions give way to much longer anecdotes about the creation of the piece or the aviation/historical dynamics on display, which connect up to the long essay about aviation art and the artist's autobiographic musings. Not just a bunch of "portraits" of airplanes, but ones that try to instill some drama or scenic grandeur as well. 45 pages dedicated to large reproductions, but unfortunately, eight of those pages are used to create four double-page-spreads, none of which are able to overcome the gutter distortion across each painting's subject. Also, another five pages are lost to painted cutaway diagrams or drawing technique explication. Some of the collected paintings step out of 'the box' and instead show things like flight human drama or our beginnings in the space race.