Once the perspective drawings and value studies are finished, it is time to start putting it all together. At this point, I needed to decide on a background. I knew from various historical sources that the weather on Sept. 15, 1917 was foul. However, I wanted to be able to show a few spots of sunlight breaking through the clouds so that I could bring some warm tones into an otherwise predominantly cool color scheme. I had a photo in mind that I knew would work well as a starting point for my background. It was a photo that I had taken while on a flight from Seattle to St. Louis the year before that showed some very dramatic backlit clouds.

In order for this photo to work in my composition, I knew it was going to need some changes. Most notably, I would need to convert the vertical format of the photo into a horizontal format suitable for the painting. Since my starting point was a digital photo, I decided to make the necessary changes in Photoshop rather than draw it out on paper as I do with other works.

The sky went through several stages of development before I reached the version that would ultimately be used in the painting. Initially, the background for the composition was simply a widened version of my photograph. In and of itself, this was a nice subtle background. However, I evetually realized that this background gave neither a good sense of foul weather nor a a sense of depth. I decided that what it needed was some low clouds in the middle ground, between the aircraft and the ground. Once again, I set about making the necessary changes, adding additional clouds and mist and adjusting the values until I felt I had a good balance of darks and lights. As with all of my paintings, my goal is to have a background that supports the subject without distracting from it, while at the same time helping to guide the viewer's eye through the composition.

Once I had a background that I am happy with I began placing my aircraft into position. I almost always use Photoshop for this process as it allows me the freedom to move elements independently, lock elements in place and undo mistakes.

For Wolff's Requiem, the main body of the composition is constituted by the three largest aircraft. Like the background, all other aircraft should only serve to tell the story and to guide the viewer's eye around the composition and back to the subject. I usually don't feel the need to depict all of the aircraft involved in a particular event. Too many aircraft in a scene can sometimes be distracting, so I normally try to stick to the KISS theory (Keep It Simple, Stupid), only showing enough aircraft to tell the story and create a strong composition. In this case, however, I felt that it was important to try and capture some of the swirl and chaos of an actual dogfight. Therefore, I put in 9 of the 10 aircraft that we know were present that day.

Working out the exact positioning of every element can be a long and tedious process, often taking days, or even weeks of staring at the computer screen and making tiny adjustments back and forth until I am satistfied. My ultimate goal was to create an image which brings the viewer's eye first to Wolff and the triplane, on to MacGregor zooming overhead, and then around the image through the supporting elements before coming back to Wolff in the Triplane.