embraer – Norebbo

Side view illustration of a Southwest Airlines Embraer 190

7 Comments April 13, 2016 Standard

Have you heard the news? Well, it’s just a rumor at this point but there is speculation floating around the airline industry right now that Southwest Airlines is considering adding the Embraer 190 to it’s fleet. That’s pretty big news considering how they’ve been a Boeing 737 carrier since they launched back in the 1970’s. They did lease a few 727’s from Braniff for a few years, but other than that, Southwest has never operated another aircraft type.

I couldn’t resist creating an illustration of the E190 in the Southwest livery as soon as I heard this news. Of course this is the outgoing (old) livery, but since it’s a conceptual rendering anyway, I thought I’d do this one first since it’s my favorite of them all. I like the way this design flows nicely from the front of the aircraft to the rear, and it really grew on me over time. I didn’t care so much for the bold blue and red combination (with bright yellow and orange highlights) when it was first unveiled, but after seeing this design for so many years it almost became “normal” for me. It was definitely better than the original “mustard rocket” colors though – that livery was the worst of them all. But I will admit that now that some time has passed, it does have a sort of cool retro vibe to it that was lacking in the 1990’s. Back then, it was just downright ugly.

Side profile illustration of a Southwest Airlines Embraer 190 regional jet over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

Anyway, I believe the Embraer 190 will be a good fit for Southwest. It’s a smaller aircraft than the 737, and the lower seating capacity will allow them to enter (and augment) smaller markets that wouldn’t support the larger aircraft. Southwest has always been pretty good about serving the smaller and secondary markets that the larger legacy airlines choose to pass over, and having the ability to dig deeper into untapped (and profitable) routes is going to be necessary going forward. The E190 is a fine choice, and I also believe that the CS100 would be a viable option as well. But then again I’m not an airline executive, so what do I know?

Hope you like this quick conceptual rendering. It was fun to put together really quickly just for fun, but if Southwest does announce an order for E190’s you can be sure I’ll do another version in the latest livery. I may even do some special liveries too if I can ever find the time.

Embraer ERJ-175 templates with the new style winglets

2 Comments October 30, 2015 Standard

Creating airliner templates isn’t easy – especially when it comes to getting all the little details correct. It was only a few days ago that I posted my completed set of ERJ-175 illustrations, and like always, it felt really good to have that project wrapped up and posted to this blog. It was especially true in this particular case because I had been needing (very badly) a version of this with the United Express livery for several weeks now. Having a finished template from which to work from was a huge relief and I wasted no time in getting to work on it.

But then…disaster. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration (lol) but at least it felt that way when I discovered that there are actually two versions of winglets available on the ERJ-175, and the United Express planes have the one I didn’t know about (and didn’t include on my original template). Dang it! Just when I thought I was done, I had to go back to the drawing board and create another version of the wing with this new winglet. That might not seem like that big of a deal, but it required a major structural change to my original illustrations. This particular winglet is a completely different shape than the other one, which affected the structure of the wing slightly – so there were a lot of things I had to rebuild and/or adjust in order to get it to fit correctly. Considering that I just went though the “ahhh, it’s finally done!” phase of this template, you can probably understand how irritating it was to have to go back and reconstruct a major portion of it.

A technical side profile line drawing of a Embraer 175 regional jet with the new style winglet over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

As much as it sounds like I’m complaining, the truth is that I’m glad that I took the time to create another version with this new style winglet. It only makes my airliner template collection more complete. And hey – I learned something new about the ERJ-175! These larger winglets make this particular airplane look very different from certain views – especially front and rear. They are wider and less angled than the original winglets, and that shallow angle helps to extend the overall wingspan a bit and make the airplane look larger than it really is. On top of that, Embraer claims a 6% increase in fuel efficiency over the original versions. Better looks + better economy seems like a winner to me.

Embraer 190 blank illustration templates

4 Comments June 7, 2015 Standard

Embraer has come a really long way since the 120 Brasilia, and this ERJ-190 is nothing like those old turboprops from the 80’s. It’s everything those old airplanes weren’t: quiet, spacious, and dare I say it…comfortable! I’d also go as far as to say that the 190’s are much better looking airplanes, but that’s totally subjective so I’ll leave that up for you to decide.

These side view illustration templates represent the first in what I hope will be an entire series of Embraer regional jet illustrations. I was even planning on doing the E175 in conjunction with this 190, but I realized that the differences between the two are so great that it made more sense to focus on each one individually instead. I’m not sure yet if the E175 is the template I’m going to do next, but it’s certainly on my list of aircraft to draw.

erj-190 technical side drawing blueprint

A technical side profile line drawing of a Embraer 190 regional jet over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

You might have noticed that I’m slowly refining my rendering technique on the all white versions of these illustrations. Back when I was doing the L-1011 artwork, I realized that the way I had been doing the fuselage shading up until that point wasn’t quite right. The linear gradient which I created to show the curvature of the fuselage was too abrupt as it wrapped over the top, which created a harsh “halo” shadow along that top edge. This is more prevalent in my earlier templates (such as the 737-800), and it I’ve been working on finding ways to smooth that out while keeping the shape and depth of the tube. It hasn’t been easy to find the right balance, but I think the softer shadows that I’m using now look much better and are a lot more realistic.

Anyway, we don’t see very many Embraer 190’s here on the west coast of the US, so up until now it hasn’t been an aircraft I’ve thought much about. However, a recent trip to the east coast (which included my first flight on one) made me realize that these are popular little airplanes that needed to be part of my overall template collection. Hopefully you find these illustrations useful!

Embraer 120 Brasilia blank illustration templates

0 February 5, 2015 Standard

I’m slowly chipping away at my goal of building a large collection of blank airliner templates, and this EMB-120 illustration is my first turboprop. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to creating it, mostly because I’m not a fan of smaller aircraft such as this, and the 120 is not a very nice airplane to fly on (IMHO). It’s loud, cramped, and it’s small size means that it gets bounced around a lot in rough air. Thankfully, I may never have to ride on one of these things again as they’ll be gone for good by the end of the year (at least here in the US).

Having said that, I actually enjoyed doing these illustrations and my admiration for the EMB-120 grew stronger by the time I was finished. There’s some pretty neat engineering going on where the wing meets the fuselage (I love complex surfaces like that), and the organic/twisting form of the prop is very well designed. Not bad for an aircraft that was designed in the early 1980’s.

A technical side profile line drawing of an Embraer 120 Brasilia over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

One final thing I’d like to note about the white version of this blank template is that I got a little bit carried away and I may have put too much detail into it. That’s not really a good thing, as the entire premise of these templates is to present a basic representation of the airplane that can be enhanced later when a livery is applied to it. Too many shadows and reflections can actually make things more difficult when applying color later, so it’s best just to keep things simple. My 757-200 template is a perfect example of that. The shadows are light and transparent, and I didn’t apply any gloss to the surfaces. I should have had the same restraint with this Embraer – but I’m going to leave it for now to see how things go.

What do you think? Do you prefer these templates to be more or less detailed?