Drawing Designs..

[cukaracha]

What do you draw designs? and is there any proper technique to do it so that it turns out nice?

[White Summer]

well first i think get an idea of what you want, then carfully draw it out lightly, so that you can erase. once you liek "woah thats cool, but it still looks bad" go get a french curve, and find parts of the curve that match the curves in your design, and its just like running your pencil down a ruler. thick, clean, perfect lines.

[jmrentis]

One helpful tip about designs/final design and full sized paper templates: Use a mechanical pencil!! I can't remember exactly who it was maybe either marksound or southpa that mentioned this tip and I said well "duh!!" and felt like an idiot for not realizing this myself, especially considering for my entire schooling all I used was mechanical pencils. I had to because I had so many wrist injuries that my writing was freakin terrible, so with these I was forced to press lightly and write better. Anyhow, using these will keep your template and designs much more precise which is key. You don't need to sketch with them, I actually prefer a regular pencil for sketches, but for final full size to scale designs and template use mechanical pencils.

As for making them, basically as whitesummer said, just draw something you like. Start with small little sketches and see what you like, then once you have something you like do it to scale. This is where the challenge lies, because you will find sometimes that your sketch will not work to scale, for example a couple of mine have been either way too wide at the base or had too little upper fret access. So, once I have the design, I try my to scale drawing, then I start tweaking that to make it work, but if I lose the look that I wanted I just start over. Also, don't settle quickly. Even if you find something you like right away, just mark it for further drawings, but continue to tweak designs. I know myself and another member who drew up some designs did well over a 100 designs before deciding on one.

One last key note: Don't spend your time trying to draw a design that hasn't been done yet, many people who do this and still end up with a guitar that is just like another design or a design that is very difficult to play. Often they don't even like the design, they just wanted to do something that has never been done, if your design is unique, then cool, but don't let that be a driving factor. Just draw a design of a guitar that you would really want. And make sure it will work when drawn to scale. Those are just some basic thoughts on it, no real trick to it as far as I see. I know some people much prefer computer software to paper and pencil, so you could always try that. J

Edited August 14, 2007 by jmrentis

[cukaracha]

erm.. actually what i meant by design isn't the body design, but the finish design... eg. drawing skulls or flowers etc etc on the body... sry for the confusion...