custom paint designs

[will]

When someone wants some kind of custom design on a guitar, say they wanted stripes like Eddie Vanhalen, or tiger stripes or something. Do they draw the design and give it to you, or do they describe it and you show an example, or something else?
Also, for the transparency of colors, you have several guitars in your gallery that have a solid color(red, blue etc) where you can see the grain of the wood. Do you have total control over how see through the transparency is? That is, one person wants a blue you can barely see is on the guitar vs one who want to barely see the grain of the wood, but both are technically transparent. Is the process from there finding different grades of say transparent paints or application, dillution...
My guess is dillution of colors some how as I see a number of guitars that almost seem to blend in when you have a solid color go to a transparent(for example guitar 036)

[Rich]

If somebody has a specific idea, I need an example or two to adapt into something I can do. A picture is worth a thousand words. Often I can produce something along the lines, but it's pure artwork for the most part.

Transparent colors are usually hand applied dyes, coated with sealer and topcoats. Solid colors are usually paint. The guitar you specified was a combination of ebony dye in the field, then paint applied around the outer edges. Afterwards, several clear coats seal everything together, giving a nice, even finish and consistent sheen. I mix my own colored dyes, thus can control hue, intensity, and opacity. Again, it's hand applied with clear nitro lacquer coats over the colored spots to homogenize the appearance.

[chris]

Jun 11, 2008 11:29:52 GMT -6 will said:

When someone wants some kind of custom design on a guitar, say they wanted stripes like Eddie Vanhalen, or tiger stripes or something. Do they draw the design and give it to you, or do they describe it and you show an example, or something else?

In the case of that, we would work it out either way and take it to a good airbrush artist to realize the design. Quality airbrush work is a whole different artform, and I'd rather see it done by a professional than try to hack through it.

The closest we've done to that is this strat, which was done by a local artist and friend, Meredith Barber.
She did it with Sharpie.