Fookin' Prawns

I recently inherited an X-games skateboard that was pretty jacked up so I figured why not repaint the thing with some obscure science fiction reference. Enter District 9.





I was ready to redesign my old deck and put this ridiculous prawn on it so I gather my materials:


Other things you'll need: sand paper, your image stencil, spray primer, and if you're repainting a deck I used a disc sander to sand off the old image and start fresh.

With your deck now ready to be painted you can either decide to paint a background or stencil directly onto the wood. I decided on a black background and I also primed the wood to make sure the background held. Fortunately, spray primers and paints dry very quickly so you can do multiple layers minutes apart. I did two layers of background just in case. And cut my stencil out of my printed design.



I placed painters tape under the paper stencil and cut it with a razor blade to ensure crisp lines. This is the first stencil I've done ever, and there are other methods, including this dude's who used bolts and nuts to weigh down his stencil. I recommend watching his video because he is an awesome artist and his method inspired me to try it out. Also, there aint no rest for the wicked.

Here's the finished painter's tape stencil



Now, here is where I mess up a little. I'm really inexperienced with spray paint too, so I figured I could just be careful and spray directly onto the stencil. Wrong. Spray paint is unwieldy, make sure to cover everything you do not want painted because you will get spray (brilliant).



I did the best I could to save it with layering on another coat of black spray paint but the new paint lines are clearly visible in this next photo:



With the paint dry, I started detailing the stencil with the paint markers. If you are really good at blending at art you can work while the paint is wet and do some smudging like in the video posted above. This was my first time with paint markers (can you notice a theme?) so I made the best of it.



In hindsight, I should have left it there, I'm a bit of a minimalist and usually air on the side of leaving things simple. But instead I went ahead and added the text, which came out pretty rough because I made a freehand stencil that actually chipped away at the black paint.




All in all I'm pretty happy with how it came out. It could have been a lot worse and I view it as a learning experience, which is ultimately what the labs is about.





This entry was posted on October 27, 2010 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed.