Airbrushing for a cause part2

Well, here we are into day two of the guitar. I went over a lot of concepts of what I wanted to paint and had the designs drawn and ready to go. I found an awesome photograph on line from an inspirational quotes site that as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to use as a template. I laid it all out on the computer and it looked like this.

Okay. That stage completed, now on to the application of the paint. I masked off the upper section of the guitar in the shape of the earth so I could lay down a base coat of blue. The blue went on beautifully in one smooth coat. (Tip of the day-When spraying up against a mask, try to spray from the mask to the work. This will help prevent bleed under. It also helps prevent excessive build up of paint in a solid line when you peel the mask.) While the black was still masked off it was time to lay down the clouds. I did the clouds in about three different coats of varying levels of density and levels of white to give a 3 dimensional aspect. I start by going from dark to light. Over spray on the water blue wasn't an issue because I actually chose a more intense blue than the finished product required. When I was adding the clouds, I knew it would get dulled down considerably. With the blue and the clouds completed it was time to pull the mask off of the black. I like to see the slight glow of the atmosphere around the world so I wanted to add this next but I wanted it to be very subtle. I masked off the earth just slightly below the original mask line to prevent those build up lines I spoke of earlier.  With a very dark dark purple, I laid down my "Ahem.....purple haze" I'm working on a guitar, yes I had to go there. This is how it looked at this stage.

I decided at this stage that the lettering was too detracting from the image. It can go somewhere else. Now I'm left with a large void that needed to be filled. Time to add the moon. It wasn't in the original concept but hey, creative control definitely has it's perks.Well, time to mask off the whole guitar again. Deciding on the size of the moon was the hardest part and the exact location to fit the layout. I decided on close to 3 1/2 inch diameter. I'm a perfectionist so I ran the circle through the vinyl cutter to make the mask. Quick, easy, and a perfect circle. After I located it, I masked off a bottom portion of it to allow for shadowing. After about 5 coats of different whites and greys, I was happy with the look and removed the mask. I went in and shadowed the bottom portion without a mask to allow a smooth bleed over. Here it is.

The black is still just a little too stark and empty for me so I added some stars with a paint brush just to break it up a little bit.

Well that's it for today, I want to let it cure before I start handling it too much as I still have the lettering to do. I'll update tomorrow with the latest progress.

Have an absolutely awesome day and stay creative my friends.