On Deck skateboard progress report

I was invited to participate in On Deck VI, a charity auction for the Montana Skateboard Association.

The organization sends out rejected skateboards to artists around the country (and even Canada) to do with as we please. We'll have a month to finish our ideas and get the boards back to Montana where images of the boards will be uploaded and the auction process will begin. On May 6, and for two weeks after, the boards will be viewed (in person) at The Brink Gallery. And then on Saturday, May 21, they'll be auctioned off live, with the proceeds going toward building and maintaining free, public skateparks across Montana.

I'm honored and excited to say the least.

FedEx dropped off my board today, and I was psyched to get started. So I did.


(I'll be painting the back.)

The first thing I had to do was get this puppy sanded. Boring, sorry. It took about an hour to get the thin finish on the board removed.

The next thing was filling in some holes. Since the boards won't be used for skateboarding anymore, some of the holes won't be necessary. I'm using the existing holes on the opposite end for the hanging hardware, so those holes won't get filled in.

While the wood filler was drying, I tested out a combination of paint and markers to see what would look best. I'm settling on gesso first, then a base coat of Liquitex Unbleached Titanium and sponging a combination of Cerulean Blue, Unbleached Titanium and Titanium White. Once that dries, I'll use Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens to draw an all-over doodle design, something like this:

I'm not doing a sketch for this one; I'm just drawing whatever comes to mind and whatever wants to fit in the area I'm working on. That's the way I drew the doodle above, and it seemed to work out pretty well.