Mantis

The artwork was really an afterthought. I've drawn cartoons for years and thought I might as well put some cool stuff on it. I had seen a picture from a gig where a guy had drawn all over his guitar with a black pen and it looked really funny. This was a cheap guitar so no real risk. My JEM will eventually have the Indighost logo on the body work as well, although that's not a priority at the moment.  This was a lot easier than the fish as there was no electrics to worry about and the artwork on it was much simpler. 

The neck was defretted, glued and smoothed.

The nut was adjusted and then the strings can be put on. As you can see from the width of the neck this was originally a steel string guitar, although I had used nylon strings on it for some time. It is very hard to get hold of acoustic flat wound strings, most guitar shops hadn't even heard of them! I eventually went for Thomastik flatwounds. The top 3 strings are pure nylon like you would find on a normal classical guitar but the lower ones are flat wound. Excellent, Smithers!

The drawings were done with CD labelling pens. Regular felt tips wont adhere properly so a permanent marker is needed. I tried out a few versions of the mantis on paper first and went for this pose as the arms were most visible. A quick spray of varnish to finish.  I had the Indighost logo on the back of the neck but as this is regularly touched it has worn off in parts. This skull was just put on for a laugh, nothing profound! The TST is the logo for a side project this has been used for. More on that later...