Steeeeeeeeeeeeezz Skateboards

Back in September, Joe from Steez Magazine, e-mailed me about possibly doing a skateboard graphic for a run they wanted to do for the holidays. Since I've been skateboarding for about 13 years, this was a huge deal to me. I guess if you don't go pro and get a board with your name on it, the next best thing is to have a graphic of yours on a deck, or you can try to be like Mark Gonzales and have both, but good luck on that one. Joe was pretty open to whatever I wanted to do as long as it could have some kind of crazy face, or person on it. 

I mostly just thought of stuff that looked funny to me or would be funny to someone else. A fat guy giggling and acting very giddy was one of my first thoughts. That giggle Homer Simpson has is comedy gold and that may have been subconscious inspiration from my years of watching him.

Old ladies doing anything that's out of character is something I like to see. I love seeing little old ladies smoking, drinking and swearing more than a 16 year old. I could die a happy man if some old lady threw me the horns or the "gnarly" hand signal surfers and skateboarders get associated with.

Joe got a kick out of the giggling fat guy (I'll just have to save the gnarly old lady for some other opportunity). We played around with the idea of him reaching for the Steez logo, or maybe reaching for some other person on the nose of the board. Joe then recommended a beer can, and we decided that we could have him spraying some beer, and place the Steez logo in the middle of some foamy goodness on the nose of the board. You can tell we were reaching for a very sophisticated concept on this project

The stuff nightmares are made of.

I drew the head, hands, and spray separately so that we could play around with places for them to be on the board. Doing a skateboard graphic for the first time is tricky because when you first try to fit something on the entire length of the board, you never really think about what an awkward dimension it is to work with.

These were the color ways we played with. While I liked most of them, we had to decide on two that we liked the most. Joe and I both agreed that the lime green and navy color way had the best contrast. I wish we could have done all of them but oh, well.

We decided on the lime green/navy one and that we would do wood grain for the negative space. We also decided to just do a blue and white one for those more simple folk out there that don't dig all that fancy shmancy jazz. Unfortunately, I found out a few weeks ago that there had been some confusion with the printing company and only the white and blue colorway had been completed. It was a bummer to hear, but on the upside, there has been talk of doing another run in the future, with a new graphic.

Just a day after Christmas I received some of the boards from my friend Andy, who works on the magazine and grew up in the same town I did. Even though there had been some minor hiccups with the project, it was still great to have some of the decks in my hands. Skateboarding and drawing are my two biggest passions and to be able to combine them is amazing. Hopefully I will be able to stay involved in both for as long as I live. A big thanks to Joe and Andy for doing this and choosing me to be the one to do their first ever run of skateboards.

p.s. I will post, at a later date, where these decks will be available and how to get your hands on one if you would like to do so.