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):

Up Next....Peacock!

Moving on now...

I started this one a while ago, but haven't had the chance to work on it lately. I'm aiming to have it as my next completed painting. And hopefully sooner rather than later...lol.

Yet another one with painstaking detail...but I always love how they turn out in the end, despite how much time they take.

I think I took a few more pictures as I worked on this, but I'll just start with these - this is where it stands now. Yes, most of the canvas is covered, but I still have a LONG way to go until it's actually done!

Guitar - Final Update and Auction!

It's done!

I was working right up until the last possible hour before Rock By The Sea kicked off last Friday, and everything turned out great.

I donated the guitar to Rock By The Sea, a 3-day music festival held in St. George Island, FL every year. It went into a silent auction and ended up being one of the most successful items there :-) All proceeds from the auction this year went to UF&Shands Pediatric Brain Tumor Program, Lyrics for Life, and the Franklin County Humane Society. In the end, the guitar ended up going for $500.

Here are a BUNCH of photos (click each one to see it larger):

Putting the finishing touches on the guitar right before the auction started:

Completed Front:

Completed Back:

Other angles:

And last but not least, the auction:

Oh, and FYI, the event itself was AWESOME. A whole beach weekend of great music while hanging out with some of my favorite people on the planet. Can't get much better.

Guitar Update #5

Only two days left until I need to have this finished! It's crunch time...but I think I'll be ok.

I started the sides last night...got about halfway done. I decided to just use a pretty simple swirly/wave pattern. I hadn't used red yet, so I went with that. It's actually not 'red'...it's a mixture of two different pinks, one red, and yellow...but the overall look of it came out red. I think I might fill the other white space that's on the sides now with yellow/tan...maybe a slight touch of green - not bright green though because I don't want the sides to look like Christmas colors.

Anyway...the things I have left on my to-do list:

~ Finish the sides
~ Paint the whole back - will probably not be a huge design or anything, just something that looks nice, but is simple. No one's really going to be paying attention to the back anyway.
~ Paint the notes on the front...those will be green/yellow and will go in the 'wave staff'
~ Paint the guitar head and tuning keys

...I think that's it.

Here are the most recent photos:

Can't really see much of the sides here, but you can a little...

This one's upside down, but you can see more of the side that way:

And a view from the top. It looks kind of symmetrical from this point, but the sides are not symmetrical all the way around:

Guitar Update #4

Yet another update this week! I finally got the front done, for the most part. I need to re-paint the green on there though, because it's not 'popping' as much as I want it too - especially the bottom part that blends in with the blue more. But that's an easy fix.

Next I'll do the sides and the back The design of those areas will be more simple, so hopefully it wont' take me too long to finish everything.












Got the strings all painted too:

Guitar Update #3

So, I guess I'm not going to meet my 'end-of-March' deadline with this...since it's already April and I'm still not finished. But it is still coming along. I took a bunch of pictures between this update and the last one, but never had time to upload them onto here as an official 'update.' Oh well.

Here is where everything stands now. I'm feeling pretty motivated this week to get this thing done, so hopefully after a few days, I'll be in a much better place with it :-)


Enjoy!

Guitar Update #2

I had a lot of time to paint this past weekend, so here are some updated photos. They're not the BEST photos ever - they were taken at night and so the lighting wasn't the best. I didn't take the time to do much editing in photoshop or anything, so just know that the colors aren't as vibrant in the pics as they are in real life. :-)

I fought with the water part a lot on this thing...I think I changed the design about a million times before I actually started painting it. Then I DID start painting it once, and I still changed my mind so I started over.

Here's where it stands now...and yes, this is how the water will look...but I'm thinking about lightening up the darker blue into a lighter blue. You may be able to tell that all of the wave shapes aren't painted yet...just a few near the bottom/center (the part that there's a close up of). We'll see what happens!

Oh, and the little white dot things inbetween the waves aren't painted yet...so that's why they look kinda weird still in the close-up. I haven't decided if I'll just make them the same blue/white combo that the actual waves are, or if I want to add a different color in the mix to change it up a bit. Maybe some yellow/orange to bring in the sun colors...and to kinda serve as a 'reflection' of the sun. Or who knows...maybe even just some random color to make people ask 'why?' :-)

Guitar Update

I had a bit of time to start actually painting this thing tonight...here are a few pics of where it stands now:

Rock By The Sea Guitar

This is one of my current projects. I am taking it to an event called Rock By The Sea, and will get it signed by all of the performing artists. That's why it has a beachy/sunny/music theme.

The guitar itself is a full-size acoustic guitar. I bought it on ebay because it was so cheap. It's not even a brand...it was just listed as 'acoustic guitar' lol.

If this one turns out well, I will probably continue to paint guitars - but I'll probably get a better quality/name brand guitar.

The photos below show the progress so far. Next step...paint!