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Well, I guess I have to stop kicking the can down the road and just get this over with. I actually completed this ERJ-135 blank illustration template about a week and a half ago, but the problem is that I’ve pretty much run out of things to say about the ERJ family of aircraft since I’ve said so much about the -145XR, -145, and the -140 already. I was already scraping the bottom of the literary barrel when I wrote the post about the -140, so you can imagine how blank my mind is right about now as I try to write this post about the smallest Embraer regional jet of them all. What else is there to say about this family of aircraft that I haven’t said already?

Well, for starters the ERJ-135 is a 37-seat aircraft, which is noticeably smaller than the ERJ-140. In my opinion, it doesn’t look all that much different than it’s bigger brother, and I’m not even sure that I would be able to tell the difference between the two if I wasn’t able to see them together side-by-side. It takes a courageous AvGeek to admit something like that, but since I’m feeling brave (and still struggling for things to say) you should probably also know that I still have a hard time discerning between an A320 and an A321 if I can’t see them together to make a direct comparison. Do I need to turn in my AvGeek card for admitting something like that? Gee, I really hope not. I quite like being an airline and aviation nerd thank you very much.

Now that I’ve created blank illustration templates for this entire family of aircraft, it’s time to do a direct visual comparison between them all:

Visual differences between the entire ERJ family of aircraft (ERJ-145XR, ERJ-145, ERJ-140, and ERJ-135)

Which one is your favorite? I think I would have to go with the big daddy of them all: the ERJ-145XR. It’s not even a fair comparison if I’m being honest, because any aircraft with large winglets strapped to it’s wings will always look better than an aircraft without them (by default). That’s my opinion anyway, and it’s a good thing that the XR has winglets because if any of the smaller versions did it would be insanely hard for me to pick a winner.

Side profile line drawing of an Embraer 135 regional jet

Thankfully, this post wraps up what has been a long and grueling series of posts about the ERJ family of aircraft, and I don’t blame you if you’re sick and tired of these posts just as much as I am. It’s not like I have anything against these airplanes, but I made a commitment to illustrate them all, and I never would’ve guessed how much of a challenge that would be for my painfully short attention span. Now that I’ve reached the end of the series, I’m pretty much over it and I’m chomping at the bit to get on to the next batch of templates. Truthfully, I was over it way back with the -145 so it was a real struggle to get this -135 posted. But there. I did it!

Next up will be the DHC-8-300, which wrangled its way into my schedule because I needed it for a client rendering that I was recently working on. The good news is that it’s already complete, and I’ll get it posted as soon as I think of some things to say about it…

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Hold on a second! Before you dash on over to the Contact page and skewer me over the fact that I already made a post about my ERJ-145 templates (just last week!), you need to know that this is actually something completely different. Well, not totally different, but different enough to warrant it’s own post.

My last post was about the ERJ-145XR. This post is about the ERJ-145. Two completely different kinds of aircraft! I’m not sure if everybody would agree with me on that, but I think we can all agree that there are enough differences between the two which requires separate templates. Here, check out this graphic I made which shows the visual differences between the ERJ-145XR and the base model ERJ-145:

The highlights in red are the visual differences between ERJ-145XR and ERJ-145 (base model).

XR stands for “extended range”, which means that there are some additional aerodynamic add-ons to the base model which helps facilitate higher fuel-efficiency for extended range operations. There are a ton of internal modifications of course, but since I am just an illustrator focused on the exterior of these airplanes, here’s the breakdown of what the XR has over the base model -145:

• Winglets
• A large horizontal aerodynamic fin on the underside of the aircraft between the wings
• Vertical slats at the aft of the fuselage underneath the vertical stabilizer

I’m sure there are a ton of other tiny little differences as well, but those are the major items which helps airplane nerds like us quickly identify the differences between these two different aircraft types. And if I’m being honest, I think it’s this base model -145 which looks the best out of the entire ERJ family of aircraft. The XR looks too fancy with all of its flashy add on‘s (kind of like how people add a bunch of crazy shit to Honda Civic‘s thinking that it makes them look faster), while the -140 and -135 (both templates coming soon) look like victims of tragic knife accidents.

Side profile line drawing of a Embraer 145 regional jet (base model)

Perhaps another reason why this base model -145 is my favorite is because it was the launch type for this family of aircraft way back in 1995. It was designed to be the successor for the EMB-120 Brasília, and I was totally on board with it because of my hatred for riding in small turboprop aircraft such as that little 120. I vividly remember when these small regional jets started appearing on the scene, and for someone like me who was terrified of small turboprops, I couldn’t help to think that it was a glorious time to be a traveler. That feeling only lasted five years or so, until most every airline decided to use these tiny little jets for everything – even flights longer than three hours in length. As a passenger, that was downright torture! Regional jets were excellent replacements for the turboprops, but not as replacements for larger mainline aircraft such as the 737.

OK then, can you guess which templates are coming next? If you guessed the ERJ-140 and ERJ-135, you’re a smart cookie. I’m working on them both as I type this (well, not exactly as I’m typing) and I hope to have them posted to the blog very very soon…

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One of the most interesting things about doing all these airliner templates is the fact that I learn a lot about which aircraft are really popular (or not) in an indirect sort of way. Did you know that my Boeing 747–400 template is one of my least downloaded? And that the Airbus A320 is the most popular? It’s data like this which has convinced me that the rest of the world just doesn’t share my enthusiasm for large commercial aircraft, and it kind of bums me out a little bit. I would’ve thought for sure that the big stuff like the 747’s and A380s would be the runaway favorites, but it turns out that the little guys (such as narrowbody Airbuses and tiny regional jets) seem to be what everyone is clamoring for.

Was that the perfect segue into this post about my all-new ERJ-145 templates or what? This little Embraer has been near the top of my most-requested list for quite a while now, which is strange to me considering that I personally don’t see many of these here in the US much anymore. They used to run rampant here at SAN and up north at LAX, but they’ve all been replaced by the larger ERJ-175’s thanks in large part to Skywest and their aggressive fleet renewal program over the past few years. I know that ORD still sees quite a few of these things (both American and United still have a ton), but they definitely seem to be approaching the endangered species list at a ridiculously fast pace and it may not be long until they’re all gone for good.

Side profile line drawing of a Embraer 145XR (Extended Range) regional jet

Regardless of how popular the ERJ-145 still is these days, I’m really glad to have a template created for it. Unfortunately, there are so many variants of this particular aircraft that I didn’t really know where to start once I realized that one template wasn’t going to cover everything. Because of that, I decided to start at the top of the food chain with the big daddy of them all: the ERJ-145XR – which is the extended range version of the largest model available in this family of aircraft.

The ERJ-145XR is a little different than the run-of-the-mill -145, sporting a pair of really cool-looking winglets and a smattering of other aerodynamic add-ons underneath and along the rear of the fuselage. As a matter fact, I didn’t even know that this model existed before I started doing research. I thought it looked pretty nice though, and since it was the most complicated version of them all, I figured that it would be the best one to start with so that I could work my way down to the other (smaller) variants using this illustration as a starting point. I don’t know why, but it’s always easier for me to downsize a template than it is to make one larger.

Even though the Embraer ERJ family of aircraft is quite extensive, there aren’t any significant differences between most of them other than fuselage length. Therefore, I should be able to crank through all of the other major variants at a very rapid pace now that I have this main illustration complete. Keep your eyes peeled for the standard -145 next, and then I’m going to tackle the -135 immediately after that. You’ll be happy to know that these are going to come very fast, and I hope to have everything uploaded here on the blog by the end of next week.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go sit in a corner for a while and listen to calming mediation music to fend off this anxiety I just inflicted on myself for promising a lot of illustrations by the end of next week…

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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.

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Creating derivative templates of a single aircraft type has always been a somewhat funny (and frustrating) experience for me. Whenever I finish a template of an all new aircraft type, I begin to feel complacent – thinking that the hard work is now finished, and creating the other variants of it will be really easy. Sadly, it rarely works that way. There’s no worse feeling for a time-crunched illustrator such as myself after realizing that the “simple” illustration I was going to knock out in a couple hours is more likely to take an entire week. My CRJ-700 templates were a perfect example of this – before starting on them I thought all I had to do was stretch my CRJ-200 illustrations a bit, add a few more details, and voila! Nope. Didn’t happen that way. The -200 and -700 are pretty much completely different airplanes that share little in common with one another and it ended up being an unexpectedly major project.

I’ve since learned to do more research on derivative aircraft types long before deciding to go ahead with an illustration. I actually planned to create this ERJ-175 along with my ERJ-190 template back in June, but the research I did beforehand led me to the conclusion that it was far too large of a project to do all at once (I’ve got way too much “real” billable work that has higher priority over this kind of stuff). Therefore, I’ve known all along that the ERJ-175 would essentially need to be drawn from scratch and I wouldn’t be able to leverage most of my existing ERJ-190 parts. Disappointing, yes, but at least I knew what I was up against long before starting this project.

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

Anyway, I needed an illustration of a United Express ERJ-175 for one of my other projects so this template couldn’t wait any longer. To be completely honest, I’m really surprised how different it is compared to it’s larger brother (the 190). The only thing that remained unchanged was the fuselage sectioning – everything else had to be modified in some shape or form, with the wing being the largest difference. It’s completely different, and to me, looks really small for the size of the rest of the airplane. But I have to trust that the Embraer engineers know what they are doing!

One final thing that I’d like to mention is that I drew this illustration in a scale that doesn’t quite match my ERJ-190 drawing. All of my aircraft illustrations are 5000x3000px, and I prefer to use as much as the page as possible. Therefore, I had to scale this up a bit to fit the page, and the result of that is being not to scale with my 190 illustration. So yes – you will need to adjust the scale of this one if you plan to be accurate and use both templates side by side.