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):