Deon's Custom Skate Art Deck

My good friend Deon and I met through collecting Star Wars toys and for many years he put his drawing skills on the back burner but now he's back as Jumpsuit Art, kicking huge butt and taking names!


I threw a gig/party/live art thing at a local club for my birthday and asked 6 people to customise some old skool inspired (flat and unrideable) decks I made from leftover 6mm plywood. I was particularly enamoured with Deon's one, especially since he took into account where the trucks would go and he used the space well. When I saw the drawing taking shape, I offered to top any bid. Little did I know the crafty gent had been planning to give it to me all along! Feast your eyes below.

The full deck showing the start of a gentlemen's duel. This is my kind of fish! It would make a hardy rider, with space left for a jawbone and tailbone. Click for a larger view (recommended).

I really dig how the photocopy-proof blue pencil sketching is still visible up close. As an illustrator myself I have to marvel at the perfect balance and poise of these dandy dudes.

Oops! Offence has been taken and sword-cane's are drawn. You can see in this closeup how crappy the plywood is - it must have been a nightmare to draw on using markers.

I'm stoked to have such rad stuff to draw attention to my crappy little blog. I'm sure anyone who's made it this far has been pleasantly surprised to find two posts with absolutely no whinging about scratching the Slasher or how wonderful Speed Demon Gooeys are! Stick with me, there's more to come. Cheers, BB.

Sam's Custom Skate Art Deck

How lucky am I to have such rad friends?

For my recent birthday I received not one, but two customised decks as a gift, amongst many other rad but non-skate related stuff. The first is a KFD deck sanded down to natural wood then painstakingly handpainted in gouache by my good friend Sam Breakspear aka Soopashy (she of the custom Slasher Munny last birthday). The subject of the artwork is kind of an inside joke but at least you can appreciate the ridiculously tight lettering and insane layout.

The full deck. Click for larger view (all pics).

The tightness of this hand lettered logo and the "Ozzie's Café" signage is font-like in it's crispness.

This little guy is so cool, and he's so stoked on his Santa Cruz! Look at the detail and authenticity of the logo and hardware - even the distress on the board and helmet. Insane.

No detail left out - even the typical sneakers–on–a–wire have become Vans Half Cabs!

Just one of two bits of stoking artwork to be uploaded today. Check out more of Sam's work here. I'll sign off on the next post.

Skateboard Graphics: Mike V reads my mind

Video courtesy of Shred or Die

Skate-inspired design by Board Brain

Oi! I've decided to share with you, a couple of designs I've done that are heavily based on 80's skate graphics.

Hope they make you recoil or at least put on some sunglasses!

Peace, BB

2007: This one predates Board Brain and getting back into skating by 3 years!

2009 Sticker design - Screaming Devil Horns?

Santa Cruz Slasher - Custom Munny by Sam Breakspear

Yo! If you've read all my posts since the very first one you'll know it was the Santa Cruz Slasher that got me back into old skool skating, or more specifically, dropping in on a mini ramp in full padding in a goose-like pose.

Well my good friend Sam Breakspear aka Soopa Shy is just starting off in the world of custom vinyl toys and for my birthday she turned a standard Munny into the original Slasher character from 1984!

The original pre-sword surfin' slasher

Check out more pics of Sam's awesome Slasher custom here.

p.s. If you don't know what a Munny is, check out Kidrobot Munnyworld.

The Slasher

Damn. I'm so bloody clingy about the graphics on my board, I even bought enough extra bits last week to reassemble a new skool setup to ride instead. The thing is, I bought the book The Skateboard Art of Jim Phillips not too long ago and if being an illustrator myself didn't make me appreciate that kind of detail enough, Jim talking about the ancient techniques under which they had to produce these classic graphics did.


Jim Phillips talks about his favourite graphic, the slasher, in this little clip:

It's almost 7pm - opening time for the next session at the [R]EVOLUTION skatepark ... hot damn that's tempting. That little slasher would do great on a small half pipe.

Skate Art Satire

By far my favourite thing about skateboard art is that it's constantly self-referencing and satirising.

Take these Welinder, Hawk and Rodriguez decks with their iconic VCJ* skull graphics; The images were prolific enough to trigger instant recall in anyone who saw even a corner of one not obscured by stickers.

Compare these later decks for Rudy Johnson, Jason Lee and Mark Gonzalez, and what you get is a small grin forming at the edges of your mouth. These are from the then-newly created blind skateboards, a company started by Gonzalez. The decks were a response to a Powell Peralta ad which poked fun at blind, and other new smaller skate companies like World Industries and Flip, which involved former riders of theirs.

Want to see how Powell handled it?

 

VCJ* is an acronym for Vernon Courtland Johnson, the artist responsible for all Powell Peralta art in the 80's. He seems to have vanished into obscurity, save for some new work, and a collaboration with the mighty Jim Phillips, for Pocket Pistols. Unlike the former, the latter has many books out liberally packed with eyeball-popping graphics and continues to turn out amazing and extremely influential artwork.