Guitar Update...almost done!

I had to have my wisdom teeth removed last Thursday, which gave me lots of time to sit around in pain and be miserable...but the BRIGHT side of that is that it allowed me to use my painful and miserable time to work on this guitar! Time is running out to finish, and I'm nearly there now. My goal is to have it done in the next few days so I don't have to worry about it over Christmas. The Rock Boat is January 7, so I don't have much time to play with.


Here's where it stands at the moment:

This is the sketch of the logo on the back with marker - halfway darkened:


Here's the back now that the paper part is done...I still have to go back over all the black lines to make them dark again (the end result will look more like the left/darker side of this):


Here's the whole back:


Here's the front, with a little bit of a side angle. I haven't done the white icing or the white on the life preserver yet...those 'whites' are going to be the same tinted white as the boat is now:


Head-on shot of the front:


So close...

The Elephant Project

My friend Sarah is a zookeeper at the Central Florida Zoo. She works with the elephants there, and one of her co-workers has worked there forever. She happened to show this co-worker my artwork one day online, and they absolutely loved it. So then they asked me if I would paint their two elephants...and I said "ok!"

So meet Mary and Maude - (and me...lol) :-)



Today I went to go do a little photo shoot of them so I could have some images to work from, and I also did a few sketches. Here are a few of my favorites...soon I'll figure out which of them to use for my painting.

Quirks

So I was trying to figure out how to describe myself to someone recently (in a somewhat professional way), and instead of thinking of the normal "I'm dependable, I work well with a team, etc" answers, I kept thinking of really weird traits of mine that really had no relevance to...well, anything. So obviously those wouldn't work if I didn't want people to think I was crazy.

But then I got to thinking...these weird 'quirks' are what make me "me"...so I thought I'd post a few on here. It has nothing to do with art, which is typically what I write about on this blog...but I've never really done a post about myself on here...so consider this my fashionably late but quirky introduction. :-)

Here we go...

1. When I eat a sandwich, I typically hold it on the lower right corner. Once I eat everything up to that little teeny tiny part of the crust that I've had in my hand the whole time, I stop eating. For some reason I can't bring myself to eat that piece.

2. My fingers and toes bend backwards. Like ALL the way backwards. It's pretty gross, but it makes a really cool built-in catapult when I can find small objects to launch. French fries are great ammo.

3. I'm right handed, but I'm left footed.

4. I love chocolate, and I love ice cream, but I hate chocolate ice cream.

5. At gas stations, I usually go to pump #4 because 4 is my favorite number.

6. At work, I write with a different colored pen every week. That way I can tell when I wrote something based on which color that week was. If I can't find the right colored pen for that week when I need to take a quick note, I write the note lightly in pencil and go back over it with the appropriate color once I locate the correct pen. This week's color was purple.

7. When I'm at a sit-down restaurant, and the waitress/waiter gives me a straw that's still in the wrapper, I remove the straw and put it in my drink as usual, but then I proceed to completely shred the straw wrapper into a million pieces. and I keep tearing up those pieces smaller and smaller until the food comes.

8. I absolutely cannot stand lenticular images, or the sound they make when scratched. I honestly can't even look at something with a lenticular image on it without shivering.

9. I typically look at magazines backwards. Start on the last page, work my way to the cover.

10. I secretly kinda want a Snuggie or a Slanket. I'm always cold, so I think a blanket with arm-holes is ingenious.


That's enough for now! Hope you enjoyed...and don't give me a hard time about any of them - you know you've got some too...

Another Picture Post...

I've been wanting to do another post of my photos for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it. While I'm on a roll with blogging, I guess I'll go ahead and post these, lol. Again, they're from all over, no particular order or anything - just randomness! Like I've said before, I'm definitely no expert, I just take pics if I see something interesting.

Enjoy!

The Rock Boat Guitar ~ Tissue Paper Collage

I've been working on this a lot lately, and it's finally starting to come together a little bit more! It has also moved out of it's pastel colors phase where it looked like the Easter Bunny designed it :-) I've also FINALLY gotten the boat to look like I want it to. I think I drew/erased that thing about 6 times before I was happy with it.

I ended up ordering a new yellowish-gold color of paper online for the yellow balloons. I wasn't happy with the highlighter yellow color it was before, lol. I think the darker gold color looks much better. I got it from Blick Art Materials - they have the best selection of tissue paper I've found, if you ever happen to be looking...haha.

One thing that I will probably change is the pink of the balloon that is the farthest to the left...it's a bit darker, and I prefer the lighter pink I used on the balloon toward the center of the guitar. The darker pink looks too much like the red to me. Shouldn't be too hard of a change.

Other than that, it's coming together fairly well. I think I'm going to make the boat a tan/off-white color. I guess tecnically the paper I have is called "Vanilla" if that helps you picture it, lol. In the image that inspired the design of the guitar (on www.therockboat.com) the boat is blue, but if I use that color on here, it will be WAY too much blue since I have so much water. The 'Vanilla' should work just fine though.

I can't wait to finish all the tissue paper stuff so I can go back in and draw the details with marker. Hopefully it'll look cool when it's done!

Oh, and as usual, the colors in the photos are a bit off from real life, since once again, I took them at night and had poor lighting. One of these days I'll take some during the day...haha.

SeaWorld Pottery Night!

So this isn't one of my normal art updates, but since I haven't posted in a while, and we did this, and it's technically artsy, I figured why not.

Every so often, SeaWorld has "Paint Your Own Pottery" night for employees and their family/friends. I've been every time they've done it...and this time I was able to drag Matt out there with me. Unfortunately we don't have the best shots of our masterpieces, but I'm just posting these for fun. Hopefully once they're fired they'll still look as good as they do now!

I DO have an actual update for my current guitar project...I just haven't posted it yet. Maybe I'll work on it a little bit more tomorrow and post updates then!

Enjoy our lovely creations...lol.

I did a plate with a pattern on it...once it's fired it should be silver, with orange, blue, white and brown dots/lines on it.



And Matt did a plate as well...he did a great job, considering he hates doing stuff like this more than anything! His plate has raised and indented little circles around the edges.

Rock Boat Guitar Update #2. Or #3. Whatever.

I started outlining some of the design in marker (which I'll have to re-do once it's covered in the tissue paper). But I figured I'd post some photos since it's actually starting to look like it's supposed to. Kind of. I still have a long way to go, but so far, so good.

The first time I used this technique was 8 years ago in a high school art class. My teacher had us doing portraits in this technique, which was pretty cool. I've been wanting to do something else like it ever since then, but never found the right project to do it on...until now! :-)

Right now I don't have a lot of the different colors on it, so it's looking a little pastel-ish...but not to worry...there will be lots of other random colors in there to fixt hat. I do think I'm going to make the yellow of the balloon a tad bit darker...just a little more orange-ish. Again, refer to http://www.therockboat.com/ for their color scheme this year. And I haven't done the boat in marker yet because I'm probably going to erase it and make it a little bit bigger. Also, next time I'm going to try to take the pictures in the daylight...that way the colors will be better, and the full size photos won't be so 'fuzzy.' But these will do for now!

Rock Boat Guitar Update

I have finally had some time to work on this a little bit. Starting it took a bit longer than my last guitar - that one was already a 'matte' finish, so I could just spray it with primer and start painting....this one had the typical shiny guitar look, which was nice, but it meant WAY more work for me. I spent forever sanding off the finish. And honestly, sanding isn't really my favorite thing to do, so I had absolutely no motivation to do it...which is why it's taken me so long to get to this point. Hopefully now that I can actually do the 'art' part of the project, it will move much faster.

Anyway, here are a few shots of the guitar in different stages...at this point, it is primed and I've started to draw the design onto it. The tecnique I'm using to do this project is a tissue paper collage type of effect...it almost makes it look like type of paper mosaic, which I thought was fitting, since the main setting of The Rock Boat is the water/beach/boat - you know, typical places you would see mosaic artwork. I also experimented with some of the tissue paper...you might see some of that in the pictures. Basically, I just tear different colors of tissue paper up into small pieces, and 'paint' them onto the guitar where I want them with Elmer's glue. Since the tissue paper is so thin, you can see through it a little. When pieces overlap, it creates different shades of that color. It's pretty simple, but the overall effect when I'm done should be awesome. After all the color is down, I'm going to go over the lines and all the details with a black sharpie.



Guitar with design drawn on (mostly):

Close-up of the test paper...testing the tissue paper colors agasint a white background:

Another view of the guitar, and test paper:

Late night priming in my garage. I hate the fumes from that stuff...yuck:

Finally finished sanding (back):

Finally finished sanding (front):

New guitar project for The Rock Boat

So I've decided to work on another guitar.

It was kind of on a whim last night, but that's usually when I have my coolest ideas. But anyway, I had been thinking about doing another one for a while, and I thought it'd be fun to do one for The Rock Boat this year, since it's the 10th anniversary. I'm most likely keeping this one for myself to put with my collection of random music memorabilia.

Anyway, if you don't know what The Rock Boat is, check out the website. A short, easy description that is most often used to describe it is "Spring Break for people with jobs." :-) Basically it's a floating music festival that takes place on a Carnival cruise ship, and there's live music going from the second you step on the ship (and even in the cruise terminal sometimes), until the second you leave. I've been a proud addict since 2004.

So as I was sitting around last night feeling inspired to do another guitar project, I decided to start brainstorming ideas for a design. Once The Rock Boat idea was in my head, I ended up on their website, and thought it would probably be coolest if I used some of the elements from the 'official' look of the cruise this year - so it would match. (Every year, there's a new theme for the cruise - this next one is a birthday cake, since The Rock Boat is turning 10.) So that's where this came from. This is only a sketch done on the template I created for my last guitar...I just decided doodle on it with colored pencils.

I haven't figured out what to put on the head of the guitar yet...but I'm sure I'll come up with something. I really love how everything else turned out. I can't wait until I get my guitar in the mail (I ordered another cheap one on eBay).

Oh, and this guitar WILL NOT be painted. I've got another technique up my sleeve I've been dying to try on something, and I think this will be the perfect project for it. I have used it before, but not on anything that anyone has seen. You'll just have to wait and see. But I think it'll be pretty awesome.

Anyway, here's my initial sketch. (Again, compare to The Rock Boat website to see the theming) More to come soon ~ stay tuned!