Let's skate. I started my drive to turn my Sharpie art into a business in late November 2015. Here's what I started with. I had a free place to live, though it was a toxic environment, and I sort of earned my keep by doing the "guy things" around the apartment, like fixing what broke, and driving my mom around to shop, lots of appointments, and all that. I LITERALLY did not have a dime to my name when I started this whole thing. That's how tight money was. I had a refurbished, old, HP laptop, which was still running Windows XP in 2015. I had a bunch of Sharpies and a few other supplies. I had a cheap, 12" X 18" sketch pad. That was it.
After the previous BMX and other drawings to begin to find my new style of drawing with my scribble style, I did the Chris Miller drawing above. In the days long before GoPro cameras, a jerry-rigged system took this amazing photo from above, of an epic, Chris Miller nosebone at Pipeline Skatepark's Combi Pool. That was one of my favorite skate photos of all time. The drawing came out pretty good.
Months later, with a bunch more drawings done, I saw this photo of skater Diego Najera doing a one-footed nollie. This had great, high contrast lighting, which worked well for me. I was really stoked on this one. I sent it to Huntington Beach Pier friend and old skate buddy, Don Brown. Don's also the vice president of marketing for Sole Technologies (aka Etnies, E's shoes, etc.) This is a big, 18" X 24" drawing, and is now floating around California somewhere, as far as I know.
When I started getting orders to do drawings in 2016, a friend from my BMX days, Paula, asked me to do a birthday drawing for her friend. That friend happened to be legendary skateboarding pioneer, Robin Logan, from the family behind Logan Earth Skis skateboards. Robin was known in the 1970's for doing toe flips, a pre-curser form of a kickflip. The owl represented Robin's mom, who loved owls, and looked over the Logan kids in those pioneering days of skateboarding. With this drawing, I became Facebook friends with Robin Logan, a woman who I saw photos of when I first started skateboarding in about 1976. That's cool.
As time passed, Robin Logan asked me to do some drawings for her of other skaters from her era. Here we have Skateboard Hall of Fame women Vicki Vickers, Deanna Calkins, and Robin on the right. Vicki and Deanna got my drawings of themselves for Mother's Day last year.
Another early skateboard drawing I did was this one above. It's based on a classic old photo of Rodney Mullen doing an Ollie Melancholy, which is the most tweaked a skater can get without a ramp involved. I met Rodney when I first moved to Southern California in 1986, he practiced the same place we rode every night, The Spot, in Redondo Beach. I also got to do a mini-interview with Rodney, which was in the December 1986 issue of
FREESTYLIN' magazine.
This one is Armando Chulo, a couple years ago, learning to do kickflips as a teen in Austin. His mom, Athene, asked me to do this one. He's older, much taller, and in college now, I believe.
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