What do you do when you need a particular model to act as a prop for doing a painting ? well you get out the blocks of wood and build one from scratch,even the plan had to be made from photographs published in magazines of the period,and then incredibly one of the original Langley family came forth with yet more original pictures that had been stored in a vault of an American newspaper were found,the problem was the newspaper although they charged for the pictures would not allow them to be used on any web based material ! miserable lot as the family member forked out a lot of money for two images of this rare aircraft.Fortunately I have never come across this before.
Anyway the model has been painted black and will be hung up and turned around to get the best angle for painting,then a strong diffused light will be shone onto the model to observe where the shadows etc appear,this technique was used by the old masters to reproduce images,they used some kind of box which reflected the light.
So by building the model two interests have been combined together model building & painting ! two for the price of one,and yes the family member wants a signed copy of the painting as well !