A brush paints a rich world of aviation. In the painting by Gong Yongfeng, an art teacher at a Primary School in Jintang County, Chengdu, you can see more than 10 types of aircraft such as the J-10 and the Y-20. They either soar in the air or take off into the sea with great momentum, between force and speed, telling the story of China's aviation transformation.

On November 11, the People's Liberation Army Air Force Establishment Day, Gong Yongfeng exhibited his newly created aviation works. He introduced that in the past 10 years, he has created more than 300 pieces of aviation-themed paintings, "These aviation paintings with aircraft, aviation events, and aerial battles as their themes allow people to feel the beauty of the machinery and at the same time, they can also popularise knowledge about aviation and flight."

Art teacher's dream of aviation

Gong Yongfeng recalls that his passion for aviation originated in primary school. One day, he was passing through his hometown path and a scrap of paper with a fighter jet printed on it on the ground caught his interest, "I took the drawing and looked at it for a long time, and I've had an interest in aircraft since then." After graduating from university, he loved to draw all types of aircraft. He had painted hundreds of aviation paintings. Many of these works were also published in magazines.

As his paintings became more sophisticated, Gong Yongfeng's work is beginning to be seen by more and more people. His aviation paintings have been featured in major invitational exhibitions of aviation paintings in China. Today, in addition to his own creative work, Gong Yongfeng also teaches his students to draw children's aviation paintings. He said, "This is a kind of sentiment, and I hope that through this way of art, more children will learn about China airlines and popularise aviation knowledge."

Create a database of aircraft in his mind

Aviation paintings are a combination of technology and artistry, and are an important expression of mechanical beauty. "An excellent and authenticated aviation painting requires the author to fully understand the structure of the aircraft in the painting, troop markings, and also to learn about the background, characters, location and so on at the time." Gong Yongfeng introduced that it is for these reasons that aviation painters should have considerable accumulation of knowledge of flying machines, and an understanding of aviation history, in addition to basic art skills such as sketching, colour and composition. "For example, in my drawing of the 'Xiao Long Chu Ji' piece, I was not aware of the aircraft number and squadron because it was the Pakistan Air Force." To show the restoration, he looked up magazines, the internet and many other sources, and consulted experts with experience working abroad before finalising it.

He said that over the years, he has spent over 100,000 yuan on book purchases, accumulating a large number of domestic and foreign periodicals outside, foreign language manuals, specialized atlases of various aircraft types, and three-dimensional structural cutaway views of aircraft to supplement his knowledge. These accumulations allow him to build up an aviation aircraft database in his mind, storing the characteristics and details of different aircraft types in his brain, so that he can accurately reproduce the image of the aircraft when drawing aviation and supplement every detail on the aircraft.