Undecking the Halls

Luke Overin     //     Lee Nutland     //     Sean Sparks

So the Decked Project exhibition comes to a close this weekend. But if you haven't managed to get down there to check out all the amazing work, you can head over to the official flickr set. Each board has a note with the artist's name price of each piece, you just gotta hover over it. Some of these beauties start at a mere £75 - really humble pricing from some of these amazing artists.

If you want to purchase a deck (I know I want them all!) get in touch with the gallery or with curators Vicky & EJ at thedeckedproject [at] gmail.com

I'm not sure how many are still available, so hurry!

Me     //     Dan Frye (wow!)

There's been a fair amount of press on the web about the show, it sure drummed up quite a bit of excitement, and I'm honered to get a mention and photos of my deck on some of these! Check out just a few of the reviews:

:: Huck Magazine ::

:: Pattern Pulp ::

:: Vans Europe Blog ::

:: Image Core ::

:: BooBosh Blog ::

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Here she is, my deck in all her skull-n-bunnylicious glory!

Everything's Coming Up Roses

acrylic & graphite on skateboard deck

2010

+ click for larger view

Unfortunately it's unvarnished in this shot - as I varnished it last minute before packing - not recommended! Varnishing always seems to bring everything together more; makes the blacks blacker and colours pop. Oh well, you get the idea.

Sadly I was unable to attend because of work commitments but I hear the opening was a huge success.

Tina Ziegler of the amazing Hunt and Gather blog, author of the book of the same name and manager and curator of London Miles Gallery was in attendance and wrote a lovely post on her blog with a couple of great pictures. Feast your eyes.

Decked - The Making Of

I hope you had a very pleasant Friday the 13th?!

Now that the Decked 2010 exhibition is upon us I thought I'd share a bit of my process with you. Painting on a deck was all new to me - painting on wood itself isn't, but wrangling with the curvy board was a nightmare - it has a tendency to roll about, not good!

The initial idea was formed on a post-it note, of course. Sorry I don't have a picture of it right now. Basically I used my "In the End" drawing as the central focus and elaborated on that. At the time I drew it I was in two minds whether to add more or not. So thought this was the perfect opportunity to do that.

Firstly, sanding the varnish off the back of the deck I bought. Coco wasn't really being much help at all:

I transferred the drawing to the deck from a blown up print out of the original. I managed to get round the problem of the board rolling about by using a bean bag as support:

Drawing details:

Completed drawing before (left) and after two layers of clear gesso and a light sanding (right). You can see that you don't loose too much definition of the drawing. I use Liquitex clear gesso, but it's very toothy so I lightly sand it back to get a smoother surface:

I'm pretty slack at getting progress shots of the painting stages - I don't really like the way the first layers of paint look and I don't tend to photograph stuff I find ugly!

Here's two detail previews - I'll post the whole deck once the show has officially opened.

I've call it "Everything's Coming Up Roses".

Oh and not forgetting, Van's sponsored the show this year and donated 15 pairs of Chukkas. I was one of the lucky ones to get a pair. My design is fairly simple compared to some of the offerings, but I'm rather enjoying their cleanliness. This was my first pair of shoes, so I took it pretty cautiously! Freaking stylish I reckon!
 

I did really liked doing both the deck and the Vans, definitely going to do more of both in the future.

Check out the Decked Project blog here where's there's loads of preview and process pics of a number of the amazing decks from both this year's and last year's show.

Coningsby Gallery website.

The Decked Project is curated by two lovely and wonderfully talented ladies, Vicky Newman and EJ Miles. Thanks guys for letting me be part of such an incredible project and show!

Both deck and Vans are for sale, for purchasing inquiries please contact Vicky and EJ at thedeckedproject [at] gmail.com