I’m working on my Great Expectations guitar for the Wildflower festival finally! I could not decide between the two designs I had sketched out, so obviously they were just not right. I couldn’t get excited about either one. This new design came to me really quickly. I sketched it out and got started right away.

First, back to the story (look further down to see the progression of my guitar painting):

Pip describes the night classes he attends at Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt’s shop. (It’s also her bed-chamber and she pretty much just dozes off the whole time!) Here is his description of what goes on: the children toss an old book around, fighting, great-aunt sleeps, Biddy reads aloud and they try to follow along and it’s very dark during the winter in the shop so it’s hard to even see.

After class, Pip stops by the Three Jolly Bargemen, the local public-house, to fetch Joe and take him home. Joe is by the fire, smoking his pipe, with Mr Wopsle and a stranger. I wonder if the word “pub” comes from public-house? Yes, it does. Here are some facts about how pubs got started from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_house

Guitar work:

(I am painting in oils directly on the guitar. This will not be the most exciting guitar at the event! And I am OK with this. There will be some amazing pieces there, especially ones that are more like sculpture, greatly altered…. really cool. But I feel strongly that I want my guitars to still be playable – to still function as a guitar.)