Owlily

This was a birthday gift for the most special person on earth. His best friend, my best friend, and my humble self decided that he needed this (actually, I decided and they readily agreed, but bleh, details). We bought a Yamaha guitalele (for those who think I misspelt the name of the instrument: I didn’t. It’s a Hobbit-sized guitar and it makes everything you play on it sound very jolly), I painted it, and my best friend decorated the gig bag that went with it. I am pretty proud of what we did, and I’d like to tell all the world how proud I am. I took some WIP-photos on the way to show the samesaid friends what I was doing and ask for their approval, so I figured I might as well show those photos.
I’m proud to say that this instrument has already proven its worth in a karaoke bar in my town at about 4 to 5 am (don’t ask. I had two hours of sleep and one of dozing, okay), when the DJ said he was no longer on duty but spontaneously decided it would be cool to sit down with us and slam this guitalele and a cajón in turns until his colleagues finally threw us all of out the bar because at other times of the year, day would have dawned.

Special thanks also goes to a certain friend who knows who he is who helped me with the varnish. Some dust and cat hair sneaked in, nevertheless, but I suppose that’s a mark that this is an original painting of mine.


I occasionally painted on wood before; more precisely, twice. Once, we made a twister game for my best friend and I decorated the wooden spinner. Last year, I painted a name sign (which was not-that-accidentally owl-shaped). But this was the first time I actually shaded a figure I had drawn myself; i.e., an owl. I was surprised how well it works! Wood, at least smooth wood like the front of a guitar, is very forgiving on erasing pencil lines, so drawing on it is lovely (with help of a sketch I made on paper before and traced with tracing graphite paper). And even as a painting ground it is great. The paint peeled off a bit, but it still shines fantastically! In short, more people should paint on guitars. Okay, it wrecks the sound, but it is beautiful on so many levels.

The extra photos you see are WIP shots, the owl in larger resolution, and practice pieces I did on a simple wooden plate. It wasn’t as smooth (and varnished!) like the guitalele front, so the paint behaved a lot differently, but still not bad to work with. And I was really glad I had something to try out at least once what it MIGHT feel like to paint an owl on wood before ruining the guitalele. I had references for those, the owl that ended up being on the guitalele is a combination of my practice owls and a colour test I made in Photoshop.

In short, this is Schmincke airbrush ink (and varnish) and white Rohrer&Klinger drawing ink on a Yamaha guitalele and on plain spruce wood, yo.
…I named the file ‘Owlily’, because, well, files need names. I want to name something or someone Owlily. I think there should be a band of that name.

Long description is long and important.