Mary is a musician from Arizona who likes Swing and Jazz. She wanted a guitar with a red cedar top and Koa back and sides. It also had to have lots of color.
Enter the dragon! Mary has a painted wooden Folk Art sculpture of a lizard. She wanted me to depict him on the fingerboard in stained glass. It was a bit of a challenge to flatten a three dimensional object down to a flat surface. My first drawing of him looked “too nice”, so I had to make him look meaner. Attitude is everything.
More beautiful Koa from that windfall tree. The heel cap is another place to put art. Mary wanted three red mirrored dots here.
I always put navigational markers on the side of the fingerboard. My standard is Sterling silver dots, but for musicians with impaired vision I use something bigger. Here I have inlaid strips of mother of pearl to help guide Mary’s fingers to the right frets.
The colorful geometric rosette is made of mirrored stained glass, and echoes the colors of the fingerboard inlay. If you’re going to be on stage under the spotlight, why not sparkle?