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Give some pointers on this design, please.

I am fixing to start working on a fiver, but cannot seem to get the design worked out right. Something seems off to me. Having real issues with the headstock, too. I keep drawing things that it seem I have seen a thousand times before.

Tear it up, I have thick skin.
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Kibuddy said:
I think you may want to bring the upper horn in tighter to the rest of the body, so the "butt" is wider than the upper section.
Yes, that or make the butt wider. But in general if the upper horn is farther from the centerline than the bass-side lower bout, it looks odd.

One of those rules that may have some exceptions.
 
Yes, the butt end should be wider.

The lower horn should be smaller. Cover up the lower horn with some paper and then step back and look at the overall design and try to picture the lower horn.

Here's what I do (for all my artwork, be it wildlife, portraits, or designs).

Take a blank sheet of paper and cover up half of the shape and reshape the exposed part the way you feel looks right. For example, first cover the upper half, and reshape the lower half. Then cover the lower half and reshape the upper half. Then do the same with the right half, then the left half.

After you've done that, then cover up quadrants of the design and do the same thing you did in halves. Cover the upper horn quadrant with paper and redo the lines of the other three. Then cover the lower horn quadrant, etc.

If you don't cover up the part that seems "off", the existing lines will prevent you from really "seeing" the way it should look. The existing lines will trick your brain. But with it covered, it allows you to imagine how the the design should flow into what is covered.

Pay close attention to how the lines flow into what is covered. By breaking it up into smaller and smaller sections, you first get an overall feel for the whole shape, and then little by little focus on smaller areas and how they flow into one another.

When you are just looking at it in it's entirety, it's hard sometimes to know what exactly is off and you end up changing it all (one part at a time), over and over again, without ever being satisfied with it.

And probably the easiest little trick is to look at your design in a mirror. After looking at your work for so long, you stop being objective about it. Looking at it in a mirror makes it appear to be a new design, as if someone else did it. VERY EASY way to quickly determine things that don't seem right. Also flip your drawing upside down as well. Doing those two things alone will help immensely with your design.
 
the lower horn looks too long. it should be smaller and shouldn't be even with the butt end lower bout. it looks akward otherwise. the upper horn looks too bulky to me. you should draw a line where the 12th fret is. usually the 12th fret is a good place to stop the upper horn for balance issues. it also looks like the neck pocket might be a little too small for a bolt on.
 
I would:
extend the neck further into the body.
deepen the lower cutout and shrink the lower horn a bit.
pull the top horn in closer to neck, adjust cutout.

As for the "butt", the waist is a little extreme/sharp. You might try adjusting that transition, although that may be the look you're going for in which case more power to ya.
 
spudmaster34 said:
the but with that chunk out of it is getting old, it seems like every new design i see has that bite taken out of it

Me, too kinda, but I also hate having to balance basses when leaning them against an amp or something.

Thanks for all the input, guys. Amazing how things jump out at you when someone else points it out!

No problems with the headstock?
 
I like it. I like the way the curves lead the eye to the neck joint. You could lop off either horn and still have a coherent shape. That's pleasing to my eye. The curve on the upper horn helps to bring it back closer to the neck, and to me that alleviates the visual balance problem others have (though I never discount the opinions of others.) Perhaps that cut out butt-chunk (coincidentally, my nickname in high school) could be slid up a hair, closer to the center line, leaving more wood in the lower bout, and balancing out the upper horn's distance.

That butt-chunk is a little trite, but, then, what isn't? If you dropped it altogether, it leaves the upper horn as the only sharp point on the body, and that feels little out of place. I thought it a little out of place anyway, until I saw the headstock, which echoed the "intersection of curves leaves sharp vertex" theme. Perhaps an assymetrical butt-chunk (my wife's nickname) with a sharp vertex would help unify a theme in the body independently of the headstock.

The headstock is good. It doesn't give me a boner, but it's unoffensive, in a "resembles a scalpel" kind of way. It looks like you'll need an interdimensional space warp to get that A string to the tuning post, though.