Old guitar...new paint job (in progress)

Thought I'd share a work in progress photo of a little personal project I'm working on just now...

For ages now I've been meaning to repaint an old guitar of mine which I bought way back in 1997. I'm a big fan of Iron Maiden and really wanted to have a go at doing the artwork from their Fear of The Dark album. Melvyn Grant was the original artist and he produced what was - and probably still is - my favourite piece of album art of any band. You can see his original painting here.

This is the first time I've ever tried doing any sort of guitar paint job. I'm using brush and oils as opposed to the conventional airbrush approach used by most artists for guitar artwork. So far it's going ok, but keeping the paint as smooth as possible is the tricky part. It will be important to have a smooth finish so the final lacquering / polishing can be done without any problems. I'm having to build up the paint layers quite thinly, so soft sable brushes, lots of medium and plenty of patience are the order of the day! The other challenge is keeping hairs and dust (and wandering domestic animals!) off the wet paint.

I've still some ways to go with the main painted area, plus I'll be adding lettering and painting the guitar headstock. The sad thing is once it's all done I'll have to wait two or three months for the oils to dry fully before any lacquer can be applied, but hopefully the end result will be worth the wait. I'll post up more photos when the whole project is a bit further on.