vans bowl recap part one

so last weekend i went to huntington beach, california and helped paint the bowl for the van doren invitational skateboarding event along with russ pope, rich jacobs, mike giant, and zio ziegler. here are some photos from  my trip, part one. lots of stuff here, too. and here.

traveling is amazing and weird. when i was in indiana it was dark and had all my stuff ready to go and the cat was being unnaturally nice to me.

and the next thing you see is this. airplanes are time and space travel.

 and so i get into HB and i'm walking around trying to get my bearings and what do i see? i see ed and deanna templeton. ed was a big inspiration to me as a kid. i was really into his one-foot ollies, nose bonks, and his graphics. i had his "check out" from transworld stuck to my wall for many years. i went up and said hihowareyouyouwereabiginspirationtome and felt like a dork but it was better than not. twenty minutes later they showed up to the bowl and i took this photo. i am happy to say they were both super nice and deanna told me i should wear sunblock.

but anyway to back up slightly i made my way over to the bowl and i see omar hassan shredding around. that was nice to see. you have to understand that growing up in the midwest i didn't see many of the skateboarders from the magazines and videos so over the next few days i was keeping a mental checklist of people was seeing in real life for the first time. i would be lying if i said i wasn't tripping out a little bit.

now to the arting, i guess. i really had no plan as to what  i was going to do. the week leading up to my trip was hectic and i hadn't really had time to sit down and think about things. my friend chris gave me some cool german sketchbooks that i took with me. i sat on the plane and drew for a few hours, trying to fill up the book. something appeared that i thought would work and that i was excited about. i could add to it and adapt it. it was very important to me that not only i make something that looked right but that i was really feeling it. i wanted to feel the magic and that usually happens with the fresh stuff. and this was fresh and i was feeling it so i just went with it. above is the sketchbook and the blank bowl surface.

i went and got some chalk and sort of pencilled (chalked) it in so that i didn't just get going and blow it. 

 look at all this paint. 

 the next day i got going painting in some color shapes. and eating breakfast in the bowl, which was nice. think of all the places you can eat breakfast in the world. the flat bottom of an interpretation of the marseille bowl in huntington beach california is a pretty good one for the list.

this is a disguised version of my cat. i could see him being pissed if i didn't include him in this project. so here it is. now get off my back, julius. 

 blue and white and red shapes

and then greens. i like the way it looks like this. i think i need to learn how to do less and let things be. let the colors do the talking. but there was a big part of me that was screaming from the depths "black black black black" so i had to do it. maybe next time or whenever i stop being a wuss. 

and then by the end of the day i got here. i brought a bunch of brushes with me but i only ended up using one for everything. i am a sucker for the black for sure.

i came back the next morning and thought that i should expand and add some more. what else could that possible mean other than a giant fried egg? nothing.

 i also added another person peeper on the other end and it all ended up looking like this.

 and this

and this

much more to come including: neil blender sighting, lurking on hosoi, semi-nude teenagers being bummers, the amazing humans i worked with, friendship, and a danzig pencil.

now you can watch these dudes rip all over the stuff we painted: