She loves her Koi fish.

Here's the artwork for my wife's deck. She's pretty excited about the chance to do something after her first creative endeavor, a 12" vinyl record stencil piece I worked with her on.

We took a photo of her back and I taught her about tracing value patterns in photoshop with the pen tool. She sanded the deck and has the outline transferred to the deck. Tomorrow she'll be trying her hand at some watered down acrylics. Should come out nice.

Jeff Lenoce and Mike Frazier autographed deck

Huge shout of thanks to show participant and all-around-great-guy Chris Ryniak for calling in a favor from his buddy down at Skatepark of Tampa. Chris managed to get us a shop deck autographed by pro skaters Jeff Lenoce and Mike Frazier. We'll be auctioning off the deck at the show via silent auction or raffle with all the proceeds going to local charity.

Chris and Skatepark of Tampa are made of pure awesome!

Cutting it close to the deadline as always, I finished my board the other night. Looking forward to the show, the work on this blog is looks awesome!

the end of the line...

i would have liked to add more detail,
but i've run out of time, painted myself into a corner,
ha!
it just needs a couple of coats of gloss medium and
then off to keith in the a.m.
i can't wait to see everyone's decks.

LA office!

We have sent out our decks! LA will make the deadline!

We all had a great time creating our decks, and as you will see they are all different and amazing. I want to thank Keith for hooking this show up. I was a really nice for us out here to collaborate with all of you amazing artists back in the cold and snow ;)

different types of finishes

so, i saw donna's final deck the other day. she used Plaid - Royal coat decoupage hi-gloss finish. She told us that she sprayed several coats (i don't recall how many though) but her deck looks like there is an epoxy poured or some sort of heavy glaze/varnish on it.

on the other hand, Aaron was looking for some sort of finish and decided to use Krylon Crystal Clear acrylic spray. his deck was completely matte finish first... he put 2 coats and it has a nice sheen to it.

anyway, i was trying to take a picture of them together for comparison... but it didn't come out exactly the way i thought it would.


fyi, you will be able to find the krylon spray at any craft store (pat catan's, joanne fabrics, michaels, etc.)... however, this decoupage spray is hard to find. it looks like michael's is the only place you can buy that. if you're planning to buy the spray, i'd recommend calling the store first.

just a sneeky-peek...

i'm pretty sure i'm finished.. mixed media monstrosity! weeeeee

Monsters! done.

Well it was interesting to say the least. After many many late nights and false starts, I finished my 3 pieces today with a final touch up of paint on the text and a couple of coats of gloss. They probably could have used another few coats but I ran out of time. I needed to get them in the mail today so as not to be paying some crazy 2 day or overnight fees to ship them. UPS ground from NY for $15 bucks not too bad... they'll be in Keith's hands at AGI on Thursday.

I enjoyed the process and learned a few things along the way. One of which is I need to be doing more 'hands on ' art as opposed to 'hand on mouse'. I think my favorite part of this was doing the splattering last night. Messy and fun. I have some extra prints and some canvas lying around so I think I will make some more pieces on this theme.

Anyway, here's what you've all been waiting for...the final picture of all 3 completed decks....


:)

More show posters!

Thanks to Jaden Devogel for hooking us up with these 2 new show posters. Jaden's wife Eliza is doing a deck so not to feel left out, we talked him into knocking out a poster. Thanks again Jaden!

Perpetual Progress

This is the last shot I'll post before the show. I have some additional dark reds, blacks, blues and maybe some yellows to finish up, but I'm enjoying the steady fill-in-the-shapes painting process I have going.

More Cuts

Cut the large chunk out of the side last night, and roughed in a couple more bugs. May add one or two more at the top and that should be it, then we can route in a couple of tracks.

Paint pens and sharpies

The paint pens and black sharpies are working great for the line art.  Hoping to have most of it done tonight.  Although that's what was supposed to happen this past weekend.

Have a seat...

What do you do with about 60 broken skateboard decks? Build a club house? Heat your home?

There has to be something to do with these other then toss them so I asked Jim over at Tri Star Skate to see if he could hook me up with some broken decks. He put out the call on myspace and people responded big time by bringing over 60 busted decks to the store.

So I had a few ideas on what to do with them. I did a Boba Fett deck on one since Boba is all beat up and started working on a set of Pac-Man ghosts. I ended up doing an installation piece at the show with some of them (see photo below) by cutting out the name of the show from broken decks which then turned into a bunch of orders for customs letters.

After a little thinking I decided I was going to make something people could actually use. Furniture. The idea obviously isn't new, but it's new to me. :)

I found a pair of these Steelcase chairs in the dumpster at work. Nothing wrong with them other then some stains and the fact they're way out of style.


After pulling apart the seat to see what I was working with I fished through the pile of broken decks in the back of my truck and pulled out a few I thought would work. Turns out one of the broken decks is a Plan B deck signed by pro skater Ryan Sheckler with a sharpie. Doesn't get much luckier then that!

Only about 2 hours into it total and I've made some great progress, which is good because I want to do 2 of these chairs (and maybe a small table) for the show.


The deck chairs were a hit at the show. I sold 3 of the four chairs I created. The unsold chair is now relaxing in my office waiting for a new home (or enjoying it's current one). Want it? Let me know.

Here's a couple of pics of the two of the finished chairs. I plan on building a couple more of these for an upcoming deck show I'm curating in May.

Making Progress.

here's a start. gonna get in there and noodle it out, hopefully have it done by tues morning. may have to make edible zombie cupcakes too.

Sketch and stain on :)

Now to put some light acrylic washes over top to bring out the values and highlights. Going back to traditional art is like trying to animate at 8 frames per second :O slow and choppy. (Control Alt Delete would be nice)

Monsters progress II

Getting close to being done. Ran into a few speed bumps along the way, been working them out. Wound up priming the boards for better adhesion of paint & Glue...

Then I proceeded to trim the faces to just the areas I needed, while watching Iron Man Friday night with my daughter Celia. Glueing them was a little tricky. I felt the wheat pasting was a big sloppy mess when I tired it and I want these to to be smooth and flat. So... I was going to use a hi tack spray, but that seemed kinda messy too, so I raided Celia's art supplies to find a trusty glue stick. I had a few hiccups with not having enough on the back but I got them on and they seem pretty good now. Lots of rubbing and smoothing. But here we are...

Now for the paint. I lucked out buying some Folk Art paint and it has been great to apply for the most part. This black coat when on super smooth and with excellent coverage. I don't think I will need a second coat at all. Got a little lifting on the paper in a few spots but not bad. smoothed it back down before the paint dried.




Now I need to cut a stencil as a loose guide for the type. Trying to get that done in the next hour or so. I will put a heavy gloss coat on this to seal then probably a matte finish.