It’s quite possible that the name Roy Cross doesn’t mean a
great deal to you. That’s okay, this is not a test. However if you’re a man who
grew up in the UK or several other countries during the 1960s or the 1970s, I
bet that you’ve seen some of his artwork. For Roy Cross produced the artwork
that graced the packaging of many, many Airfix model kits. He was, in my
opinion, a very fine artist, who, in the hope of securing regular work, wrote
to Airfix headquarters enclosing samples of his work. Airfix, knowing a good
thing when they saw it, commissioned him to produce artwork for the packaging
of a model of a German Dornier bomber. Thus began a long and fruitful
partnership. Sadly, Roy passed away a little while ago, having just reached the
age of 100.
For me, one of the huge advantages that Airfix models had
over rivals was the Roy Cross artwork on the boxes. Even now just looking at
the artwork brings wee tingle of excitement to me.
Okay. Now, if you cast your mind back to June , you may
recall that as one of the 30x30 challenge paintings I made this-
I worked out when I was doing it that I wanted to use this
specific livery , the Hoverlloyd livery, because that was the livery in the Roy
Cross painting for the Airfix kit of the SRN4. Now, even if I had permission to
reproduce the Roy Cross picture here, I wouldn’t. This is not a copy, and
believe me, as you would see, I’m no Roy Cross. But it did set me thinking.
Now, I was a pretty dedicated Airfix modeler from the age
of about 5 or 6 right through until my O Levels. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I
wouldn’t turn my nose up at Frog, Revell or Tamiya, or Matchbox when they
produced model kits for a while, but Airfix were my faves. Then life intervened.
My son was never interested in modelling or anything craftwise in general and
so that way back in was never opened to me. Then, maybe five years ago, I
discovered that Airfix – who have passed through different owners more than
once since, is still out there. I bought a kit of the Aston Martin DB5 to see
if I could rekindle the flame. I just didn’t really enjoy it – maybe because I
have other outlets for my creativity now.
Still, thinking about the SRN4 kit. I could afford to buy
it now. But I don’t want to. I’m not interested in building it. But. I can’t
help wishing that I’d bought it or had it bought for me back in the day. Which
led to me thinking about other models that got away. Another one was the Type B
London Bus. Which purely coincidentally I also painted during the 30x30
challenge – straight after the SRN4 –
AS it happened I also painted this type of bus as my last
painting of the 2018 challenge
Which set me to thinking. Why don’t I make a few more
pictures of the subjects of the kits that got away? And today, I made another
one.
It’s a rather unusual looking plane called the Short
Skyvan. The back of the plane opened up and you could drive a vehicle into it.
They also carried passengers. I’ve painted this in the Olympic Airways livery
artly because this was the livery of the plane on the painting of the box lid,
but also because I did actually see one of these on my first visit to Greece in
1982. I was island hopping and could only afford ferries, so I didn’t get to
fly in one, more’s the pity. The 30x30 is over so I sketched it roughly in
pencil first:-
I did think about going straight in with paint as I’ve
become more and more confident with y draughtsmanship with direct watercolour
over the last couple of years, but what the hell? Here’s the finished painting
Now I somehow doubt that this painting would shift that
many model kits, but it’s pretty decent. As I said, I’m no Roy Cross.
