Unique Dye Question

[Brightkj]

Ok... I have this very nicely grained Swamp Ash body that is just begging for a finish, but I want to do something I haven't seen anybody else do yet.  Just to get one thing out of the way... I already know grain filler is a must on this body.

What I want to do is stain the body, which sounds simple enough.  The twist is that it that the body will be acting as a canvas for some artwork, but so that the grain shows through the art.  Much of this art is likely to have fairly fine lines and this is where my question comes in.  If I use an alcohol-based dye applied with fine-line artist brushes, can I expect a lot of bleeding or will the dye hold a line more like paint?

Also, does anyone know where I can source small quantities of dye?  I'm not likely to be building another guitar anytime soon and would hate to have to buy large quantities just for this one body.

Thanks for your input.

Kevin

 

[jackthehack]

Doesn't sound like that would work...

What color would you stain the body? Clear or colored grain filler? Forget about painting with dye, unless you want to do some kind of impressionistic water color kind of thing. It will run/bleed into the wood too bad. If you've filled the grain, it probably WON'T absorb or adhere at all.

Stain and fill the body, seal it, then use another medium like oils or acrylics to do the painting, then seal again and put whatever top finish you plan on.

If you had a sketch of what you were trying to do it might help...

 

[Brightkj]

No sketch needed... you've confirmed what I had already expected, but I just wanted to make sure.  Thank you very much for your time.

Kevin

 

[Tonar8352]

Can you airbrush your art?  If so you could do it with shading lacquers.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

Yeah the alcohol dyes bleed a lot.  I dyed the pick up routes on my build with q tips and just blotted it in there.  It spread about 1/4" or 0.5 cm away from the dot.  I was using korina, but I imagine that the same sort of thing would happen.
Patrick

 

[Brightkj]

Based on all the feedback, I've pretty much nixed my idea and airbrushing wouldn't be precise enough for what I wanted to do.  Now, I'm looking at either a black grain fill with blue dye over coat or black grain fill with black dye over coat.