Wednesday, May 16, 2018

First ladies of skateboarding get my drawings for Mother's Day

I've been doing drawings almost continuously for a solid 2 1/2 years now, and have drawn all kinds of people.  This particular request got me really stoked.  The three lovely ladies above are (L to R) Vicki Vickers, Deanna Calkins, and Robin Logan.  All three are legends of skateboarding from the 1970's.  When I was a kid sidewalk surfing on my green plastic Scamp board in Willard, Ohio, in the late 70's, these ladies had been tearing it up out in California for years.

Since I worked in the skateboard industry in the late 80's, I met a lot of the top skaters of that era.  But all the top skaters from earlier eras are still in the legendary category for me.  Some of them were the people in the single library book my friends and I had to inform us about what skateboarding was back then.  We didn't have magazines to look at in Willard.

About a year ago, a friend had me do a drawing for Robin Logan, who I came to found out is part of the family who made the pioneering Logan Earth Ski skateboards, and a skateboarding legend in her own right.  Robin went on to become a Facebook friend, and I have done a couple drawings for her since.  A couple months ago, she asked me to do these drawings for Vicki and Deanna, and told me they would be Mother's Day gifts for the ladies.  I'm always nervous about people not liking my drawings, because, as an artist, I see all the little things I think I could have done a bit better.  So I was super stoked when Robin sent me this photo of the pair with the drawings I did for them, and they look happy to have them.

Though I'm primarily an old school BMX freestyler, skateboarding has played a huge role in my life, and I started skating five years before I got into BMX.  There are A TON of downright amazing artists in the skateboard world, and it amazes me that I wound up drawing pictures that have been given as gifts to the three legends that helped create the 70's wave of skating that drew me in.  Thanks ladies for the inspiration to myself, and all the kids of my era who made skateboarding a part of your lives.  Keep the stoke going!

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