Ship and Aircraft Career Montages

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Ship and Aircraft Career Montages

What is a Career Montage?

Career montages are multi-image profile drawings designed to celebrate your career in the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. Unfortunately, we do not currently produce a product for the Army. The montage is composed of images of all the ships and/or aircraft in which you served during your time in the service. We can also add in patches or insignia to represent schools attended, or shore and non-flight duty assignments.

How much does a Career Montage Cost?

The price of a career montage is based on the number of images and patches you want us to include on the drawing. Our fee starts at $50.00 for the first image (ship or aircraft), plus $25.00 for each additional image (ship or aircraft) you want us to add. There is also a charge of $10 for each patch or insignia for schools and shore or non-flight duty assignments. This fee is for an unframed drawing, printed by high-resolution giclee, on heavy-weight, acid-free archival stock using highly lightfast inks, to guarantee many years of enjoyment.

What else is included on a Montage?

This is determined to some degree by your particular service branch. At least one example is shown below for each service branch. Each montage starts off with a name plaque, showing the recipient's name, years of service, final rank, and rank insignia. Also included is an American flag. We also include insignia to represent the type of service, such as dolphins for submariners, surface warfare insignia, aviator and aircrew wings, cutterman's pins, etc. With each ship or aircraft image, we include the ship's or squadron's patch. We also will place an individual's years of service aboard that ship, or in that squadron, under the patch. Let us now if you were the CO of a ship or shore unit, and we will add the appropriate emblem.

How large are Career Montage drawings?

Our standard career montage has an image size of 12" X 18." This size drawing fits nicely into an 18" X 24" frame, using a 3" mat. This is a good size for 2 - 6 ship or aircraft images, with a couple of additional insignia. For more images than this, we recommend a larger print size to show off the fine detail in the ship or aircraft images. We can produce prints up to 24" by nearly any length on our equipment, so if you'd like a larger size print, we can quote you on one, also. The increase in price for a larger print is quite reasonable, however, the larger the print size, the more expensive it becomes to have it framed. So keep this in mind when ordering. We'd be happy to give you an idea of framing costs for any size print of interest.

Can I order a framed Career Montage?

We do offer framing for montages, as we do for our individual profile drawings. We offer several standard products, as well as custom options. Our standard framing is 18" X 24" with a 3" mat, using a black or contrast gray metal frame. A limited number of mat color choices is available. These were chosen to complement the subject matter. We use all archival framing materials and methods to preserve your drawing for many years. We have found that it is virtually impossible to ship framed prints using glass as the glazing material. It almost never arrives in one piece! Therefore, we use a clear acrylic sheet (plexiglass) for glazing. The price for a standard framing package is $55.00 in addition to the price for the montage. You will find that this is about 20% less than what it would cost to have the montage framed at a local frame shop.

At additional cost, we also offer double matting, wood frames of various types, and brass name plates in place of the printed name plaque on the drawing. We would be happy to discuss these options with you by phone or email.

How do I place an order for a Career Montage?

We are working on setting up ordering directly through our website, but until we have that complete, you can place an order by sending your information to us via email at marketing@usmilitaryart.com, or, if you prefer, give us a call on our toll-free number - 888-465-5389.

Following is the information you need to put together for your montage -

Ship name, hull number, and years served aboard

Aircraft type, squadron number, years in squadron

School attended, years there

Shore, non-flight duty assignment, years there.

Can I preview my Montage before it is printed and shipped?

If you have access to email, it is easy for us to send you a mini-image file of your montage before we print, frame, and ship it to you. Simply request this when you place your order. We actually prefer to do this, to make sure we have dates, names, and spelling correct .

Thanks for your interest in one of our career montages! We look forward to working with you on your drawing!

Here are some sample images that will show you what to expect on your own montage . Click on any thumbnail image for a larger view, then click your browser's BACK button to return here.

Navy Montage Sample

Coast Guard Montage Samples

Send e-mail to comments@usmilitaryart.com with questions or comments about this web site, or call Toll-Free (888-465-5389).

All images of artists represented on this website are copyrighted; those images of works from the Coast Guard Art Program (COGAP) are copyrighted by, and provided courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard and its art program artists.

All orders for Limited Edition Prints subject to availability.