Survey: Which painted guitar would YOU like to play?
- Thread starter debitspread
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Peter Graham
TDPRI Member
Seriously? That wouldn't make any difference at all
This is the first guitar I thought of. Smooth Ride also reminds me of the comic art of Greg Land, who is routinely accused of tracing over adult magazines and movies as reference:
I want to set up a lounge chair on your pickguard and dive into your Tele to cool off.
Now, OP, here's my 2c: I get the feeling you shared your work a little too early in the creative process for public consumption. The mockups come off as 10 minutes of time spent in modern photo editing software, and I think that's part of the reason you're getting a lot of non-constructive feedback.
For example - there are two different images of differing composition and style (cyclops and Leo) but the accompanying designs (the alternating squiggles of grey) are copied and pasted between them, which I read as half-baked.
Of the three I would focus on developing the cyclops. It's the most original and creative of the bunch and if you're like me, that's going to be what satisfies the need to paint the best.
five-four-nine
TDPRI Member
HaWE
Tele-Holic
You are right - the same as here at my (our) house
Likewise, gents, likewise.
tomi
Tele-Holic
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Sorry -- none of those appeal to me. My suggestion if you want to paint guitars is to do it as a custom business. Let the owners tell you what they want painted on their guitars.
A few related anecdotes:
Back in the '70s, a music shop near me had a "Wise Potato Chip" Strat. If you're not familiar with the brand, the dominant color of the packaging is turquoise and the logo uses a cartoon owl in yellow and black. This Strat was finished in the turquoise color and had the owl roughly where you've put the faces on your Teles. It hung in that shop for many years without selling. I think it was still there when they went out of business.
When I was a hippy high school kid with my first Tele (also in the '70s), I had an artistic friend put a drawing on the white pickguard. He used a black Sharpie to draw a spooky-looking woman's face between the pickups, with floating strands of hair that covered the whole pickguard. He then lacquered over it so that it wouldn't smear. I dug it, whether or not anybody else did. When I finally sold that guitar to finance a Les Paul, the shop owner swapped out the pickguard for a regular one and hung the decorated one on the wall for sale separately. At the time I was a little miffed, but in retrospect I think it was a savvy business decision.
Both of these were in the Woodstock, NY, area. If anybody has encountered either the potato-chip Strat or the spooky-lady Tele pickguard, I"d love to hear about. But they're probably both moldering in a basement somewhere or long gone to the trash-heap of history.
A few related anecdotes:
Back in the '70s, a music shop near me had a "Wise Potato Chip" Strat. If you're not familiar with the brand, the dominant color of the packaging is turquoise and the logo uses a cartoon owl in yellow and black. This Strat was finished in the turquoise color and had the owl roughly where you've put the faces on your Teles. It hung in that shop for many years without selling. I think it was still there when they went out of business.
When I was a hippy high school kid with my first Tele (also in the '70s), I had an artistic friend put a drawing on the white pickguard. He used a black Sharpie to draw a spooky-looking woman's face between the pickups, with floating strands of hair that covered the whole pickguard. He then lacquered over it so that it wouldn't smear. I dug it, whether or not anybody else did. When I finally sold that guitar to finance a Les Paul, the shop owner swapped out the pickguard for a regular one and hung the decorated one on the wall for sale separately. At the time I was a little miffed, but in retrospect I think it was a savvy business decision.
Both of these were in the Woodstock, NY, area. If anybody has encountered either the potato-chip Strat or the spooky-lady Tele pickguard, I"d love to hear about. But they're probably both moldering in a basement somewhere or long gone to the trash-heap of history.
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Fretting out
Doctor of Teleocity
Son of a……BC Rich already cornered that market with its classic ‘hanging ballsack’ headstock.
I can never unsee that!
Frontier9
Friend of Leo's
Separated at birth?
Attachments
Charlie Bernstein
Doctor of Teleocity
Great minds think!
AAT65
Poster Extraordinaire
You have missed the point. The question isn’t whether the image objectifies a woman (who may well have agreed to be the model) but whether it objectifies women generally.
4pickupguy
Doctor of Teleocity
Lighten up Francis. You can have ashtray dangler. We don’t care. Your choice is up to you as ours is up to us.
Skyhook
Friend of Leo's
Gotta be some of the fugliest Telecasters I've ever seen!
YMMV ofc, but just... nope!
maxvintage
Poster Extraordinaire
None of the above. Especially "smooth ride" which is just gross and embarrassing.
I once made took a squire strat and carefully pasted a Hatch show print of Elvis on it. I gave it to my sister in law for Christmas. It came out really well and she loved it. It "worked" because there was a match between the style of the strat, 50's "populuxe," and the Hatch Poster, which came from the same era.
The pinup girls work aesthetically, though I wouldn't want one on my guitar, because they come from roughly the same design era as the guitar.
You have three images with no relationship at all to the shape or the context of the guitar, except for the Leo one. But it's hard to tell that's leo fender and not just some random guy with heavy glasses. Nothing about it speaks to what leo did.
If I wanted a guitar with somethign painted on it. which I don't, it would have to be an image that had some ambiguity and mystery to it. The less photorealistic the better. Otherwise I'd get sick of it. It would have to speak to music making or the culture of music making making more broadly. If I wanted my guitar to shout "I want to get laid!!" I'd go for some more abstract or symbolic representation of erotic impulses, something less simple-minded. For example, because the pinup girls were on the side of WWII bombers, they have a complex association of sex and death and nostalgia.
I once made took a squire strat and carefully pasted a Hatch show print of Elvis on it. I gave it to my sister in law for Christmas. It came out really well and she loved it. It "worked" because there was a match between the style of the strat, 50's "populuxe," and the Hatch Poster, which came from the same era.
The pinup girls work aesthetically, though I wouldn't want one on my guitar, because they come from roughly the same design era as the guitar.
You have three images with no relationship at all to the shape or the context of the guitar, except for the Leo one. But it's hard to tell that's leo fender and not just some random guy with heavy glasses. Nothing about it speaks to what leo did.
If I wanted a guitar with somethign painted on it. which I don't, it would have to be an image that had some ambiguity and mystery to it. The less photorealistic the better. Otherwise I'd get sick of it. It would have to speak to music making or the culture of music making making more broadly. If I wanted my guitar to shout "I want to get laid!!" I'd go for some more abstract or symbolic representation of erotic impulses, something less simple-minded. For example, because the pinup girls were on the side of WWII bombers, they have a complex association of sex and death and nostalgia.
Well, it does. Do Chippendales objectify males? Did John Holmes fetishize certain parts of the male anatomy?
maxvintage
Poster Extraordinaire
Dude, of course, but the point here--the OP's original request, was to discuss the images. Telling someone to "lighten up frances," besides being a dated referfence to a forty year old movie, is telling him his opinion is not welcome. Who needs to "lighten up?"
maxvintage
Poster Extraordinaire
Yes, and I would not want images of either on my tele. For the same reason.
4pickupguy
Doctor of Teleocity
When I point out that Yoko Ono caterwauling like a rolling trash can of flaming cats is garbage and I am told “you just don’t get it, its performance art”. Fine ok.
This is performance art and you just don’t get it.
You’re not critiquing his art, but his morality, by signaling yours, and a bit late to the party.
This is performance art and you just don’t get it.
You’re not critiquing his art, but his morality, by signaling yours, and a bit late to the party.
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