Last month the good people at the Montana Skatepark Association invited me to create work on a skate deck for their annual fundraising gallery show called ON DECK 7.
The money raised will go towards construction and maintenance of Missoula’s MOBASH skatepark. The art decks will be displayed on May 4th, at the Brink Gallery in Missoula, MT where they will also begin the silent/online auction. So lookout for that come May! Visit the MSA website for more information.
Anything that keeps us active and off the streets is A-OK with me!
I was super psyched to be given the opportunity to create work on a skate deck since I’ve never worked on a surface like this before. Prior to receiving the skate deck I had a few ideas in mind but nothing sounded as fun as creating a tree house and possibly a place where Animal Chin lives! (Special thanks to the BF, for telling me the Legend of Animal Chin.)
Here’s the fun process of finding Animal Chins House:
Step 1: I started out with a quick sketch of the tree and a faint mapping of where I’d like to see the leaves.
Step 2: I painted a thin layer of gesso on top of the sketch.
Step 3: Laid out some color for the grass and painted layer of green as an underpainting for the tree.
Step 4: Started to lay in some actual color for the tree trunk..There goes my boss…micromanaging.
Step 5: Once I got the trunk texture down, I worked on the house, and added a thin layer of gesso on the stairs for later.
Step 6: I started to work on the stairs, and the little look out point on the middle left making sure to use a slightly different wood tones for the stairs so the tree and wood wouldn’t blend.
Step 7: I was really planning to keep the natural wood exposed for the finish but it was looking too brown and very monochromatic. (Boo.) So I placed some contact paper on the tree hou