Painting the Back

Before any final background colour was applied to the guitar body, it ideally needed to be a lighter shade for the 'brighter' background colours to be painted on. So here I've given all the 'background' sections of the design (and the back of the body too) a light covering of white paint. This will help the lighter, brighter watery shades to show out brighter............. and quicker.

I wanted to get some paint on the back of the guitar before I started on the front for two reasons, 1) It's the perfect place for a 'freehand' play about with the airbrush (which I don't do all that often), and, 2) It lets me play about with the background colours and see what works and what doesn't. I didn't know for certain what I was going to do with the back when I started. I had thought of having it as one solid colour, particularly as the front is going to be covered with so much detail, but, then I started playing with the airbrush and other possibilities started to emerge.

Still wasn't sure at this stage whether to just have a solid colour, but not too worried - can always paint over this even if it doesn't work out. This really is just practice to get the background for the front of the design worked out - but some ideas are starting to develop in what's left of the old 'grey matter'(not a lot!).

Starting to like this idea more as this progresses - doesn't look too great at the moment but the scene is forming now.

Right, I am quite happy with that as a startpoint for one evening. I think this will work out quite nicely when it's developed a bit further. Obviously there is a lot to do on here yet, it needs far more depth and playing about with the colours for starters, plus some clearer detailing on the reefs. I'm thinking of putting in the watery silhouette of a distant sunken pirate ship in the background between the reefs (to tie in with the detail on the front of the design), and then add a huge 'manic' shark swimming straight out of the design 'Jaws' style towards you above the right hand reef.................. Yep, I like that idea................will be playing about with this some more today.

Okay, thats the shark in place. I drew him out on matt masking film, laid him where I wanted him on the back of the guitar body and cut him out, then airbrushed him in. I normally avoid laying new maskings over newly laid paint - usually I like to lacquer in between masks - but this went on.........and more importantly.......came off okay.

There is still a bit of work to do on the shark, but that will have to wait until after lacquering - he'll do for now. The next thing to do is to paint in my wreck................and "No............I'm not adding a picture of my car"!

Simple process this..........I just drew out a rough idea of where the wreck was going to go in pencil, then painted over the outlines I'd drawn using a fine paint brush and some light (almost white) paint. The ship is supposed to be a bit ghostly, so this was definitely a case of 'less is more'. Just added a couple of darker areas around the windows for depth and the sunken galleon is in place.

Still quite a bit of tweaking to complete the back of this guitar. The reefs need quite a bit of shadow work to give them some depth, definition and more colour. I think a shoal of fish might find their way onto this scene too, but I really don't want to get too carried away with this side of the guitar.............I just want to get on with the front!

Made up a cover for electrics cavity and roughly marked out a design to compliment whats already on the guitar.

Playing a bit here, painted some characters on the reverse side of the perspex cover - where the gold coins will be.....

Then masked out the coins (on the facing side), rubbed the surface of the perspex lightly with a fine abrasive paper to give the paint a surface to key onto - then continued the design down onto the new cover.

Then removed the masking over the coins. The plan is that when the gold leaf is applied to the back of the cover, the characters that I have pre painted in bronze/gold paint, will look like images on the coins........well, thats the plan anyway................

The finished effect.................not too bad. Applied a bit of gold leaf to simulate scattered gold coins above the back plate too.

Also very lightly painted in a hint of seabed............just to ground the ghostly galleon a bit.

Okay the back is very nearly done...............just got a small shoal of fish to put in on the top left of the guitar back and that's that.

Only got on to this this evening so not much done today. Basically all that's been added to the scene on the back are some shoals of fish which don't show up very well in these pictures (but they are there - honest!) and the odd larger fish here and there............I need to put a 'twist' in this scene somewhere, but can't think of one at the moment - so any suggestions? My wife suggested having 'Nemo' (Finding Nemo) peeking out from the reef somewhere - any ideas? - let me know.

Basically that is the back almost finished. There are some bits of airbrushing still to do once this has been lacquered in, the painting on the cover now looks too dark compared to the rest of the reef and the shark is still not quite right either - but this will wait until after the lacquering when all the colours will look different anyway. So until a later stage that is the back pretty much done. The next step is to paint the background on the front of the guitar, then match in the background colours round the edge of the body so the two scenes, front and back, merge smoothly - and most importantly - look good!

Started to work the colour round the edges of the guitar - surprising what a difference to the appearance of guitar body painting in the edges makes, start to get a feel of what the finished guitar will look like.

Did a bit of tweaking here and there in the process.........................

Taking shape.............

Darkned down areas of the reef and carried the colour round the edge of the guitar body.

Looks better for the new darker areas in the reef - gives it some depth (no pun intended!)

Reworked the colours on the cover so that it matches properly with the body colours.

That is the back and the sides done bar some touching up on the shark after 'base' lacquering. The sides will also need reworking again once the design on the front is painted in, but the Guardian Guitar is now taking shape.

Okay, the guitar has now been lacquered and lightly rubbed down, so the shark can now be masked out and worked on again. Here masking film has been laid over the figure of the shark (though it can't be seen in this photograph). Also here you can see where (even rubbing down very, very carefully), I have successfully managed to rub through my lacquer coats and on through to my base white paint on the bottom right edge of the guitar body. There is no problem here, as this is easily 'repainted in' during the painting stages, but were this to happen during the final polishing stages it would be a much bigger problem..............so beware rubbing down around any edges!

I am only re-working very small areas on the back of the guitar so there is no need to apply comparatively expensive masking film to the whole of the of the guitar body.........

The rest of the back of the guitar is masked using paper while I work on the shark. I use rolls of wallpapering lining paper for my paper masks...................works for me.

Here the shark has been partially reworked as there were elements of it that weren't quite right. The eyes were in the wrong place and the highlights on the shark were a bit rough. Here the shark is looking a bit better after it's make-over, the eyes have been relocated, there are some extra colour tones applied and the highlights on the head have been smoothed in a bit. A bit more work also needs doing on the rocks to give them a little more definition and highlight but that.

Watch this space.....

 

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