Custom Paint Finish for a Guitar

It’s a rare that I can combine my passion for art and my love of music (and guitars!), so my latest project of creating a custom finish on an electric guitar was a special treat!

I started with a raw-wood guitar body cut in the shape of the iconic Fender Telecaster – a blank canvas with no direction other than to make it a one-of-a-kind guitar.

Fender has used many fantastic colors over the years, so I started by looking through some of the older “classic” colors from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.  While my goal was not to exactly match these colors, I found inspiration in colors like “Sherwood Green”, “Daphne Blue” and “Aged White”.  I also have always been partial to what is called a “Relic” finish – which is a new finish created to look like it has already seen years of use.  I love this “Relic” look largely because of my affection for one of my own instruments from 1979 that has a high level of real-use wear.

In addition to some of these tried and true ideas, I also wanted to add my own custom touch.  I didn’t want to add anything too large or detailed because I was concerned the overall look would get too busy with both a design and the relic treatment.  After playing with a few ideas, I landed on something near and dear to me – crows! At first, the crows were just black profiles (like on the ceilings of a few of my murals), but to better go with my color scheme, I used a dark grey in place of the black.   I then decided to add a little depth and detail (but not too much!) by highlighting half of each crow – as if they were flying in the sun.

With my design complete, I was on to painting the final product.  I chose to use the Daphne Blue and Aged White as under-colors – as if the guitar had been painted and re-painted over its lifetime, with the green as the final color.  I then looked at my own old guitars to replicate patterns of wear, carefully sanding down the top layers to show the colors underneath.  Once I completed this, I then went on to may favorite part and drew and painted the crows.

With the basic finish complete, I finished with a few coats of a clear finish that I then also relic’d to add protection while still looking aged.

For a bit of fun, I capped it off by naming it the “Crowcaster” to incorporate the unique design with the original Telecaster model name.

And here is the final result!

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Crowcaster close blog size.jpg
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Enjoy!

-Jason