This instrument is a Berimbau which is commonly used in the traditional music and martial art of Capoeira. I was asked back in August to personalise this beautiful instrument consisting of 3 parts, the cabaca (dome shape), the verga (stick) and the caxixi (shaker). The brief was a black painted base colour, then using the chakra colours to create a mandala pattern and include some dot work.
There was alot of freehand dot work and mandala painting practice due to the shape of the instrument I couldnt easily make a stencil so I lined up the cabaca and freehanded on the mandala pattern.
The painting took around 4-5 layers to make the colours really pop against the black background, I then outlined in black/white and added black/white dots to finish the pattern on the cabaca.
For the caxixi we made a last minute decision to paint the whole thing black except the handle which ended up being a rainbow of all the chakra colours. The base also had a dot work pattern added.
The verga (stick) was the hardest of the 3 to paint as we chose to go with 3 lines of dots in all the colours from top to bottom. And trying to get a straight line on curved stick was tough! But we managed it and I have to say it looks amazing!
All 3 items were finished in a top coat clear spray lacquer. Check out all the photos below to see the progress from start to finish. This definitely wasn’t my usual project. I haven’t ever really painted mandalas and had never painted a musical instrument but has been by far my favourite project to date!
