New skateboard commission, first steps

A few days ago, my good friend Ethan came over, with a selection of skateboards. He was visiting his creative friends, giving them skateboards to paint on with full creative license. Just like the last commission, I readily accepted. Below is the first steps I've taken today.

Also, I recommend seeing Ethan's video I helped make last spring. It was supposed to be a short intro for an upcoming skate film, but it didn't make it in due to time constraints. (And if you look really close at 0:25, you can see a corner of the last commissioned board "under his chin").

I played with some ideas of what I wanted to do on this board, but nothing was truly grabbing me. Then this afternoon, I decided to just grab a bunch of supplies, and start painting away to see what came to me.

I picked a used and slightly beat up Hiddenwave-branded board because I wanted to play around with textures more with this one, instead of a completely blank and flat surface. I took it outside, collected materials, donned some vinyl gloves and hoodie, and decided to tempt the skies while being creative.

[Selection of materials: rags, synthetic-fiber brushes, painter's knife, toothbrush, toothpaste, leftover Artist's Loft acrylic tubes, other leftover acrylic paints, old blue sheets, and Gold-brand acrylic (black) spray paint.
Not pictured: vinyl gloves and thin rice paper]

I sprayed the board with a layer of black paint, and then dabbed at it with thin rice paper. This took off some of the paint in random shapes, and the paper occasionally ripped and stayed on the board. This creation a random distribution of textures, and I repeated the process a few times over.

From here I took out the variety of paints I had leftover from other projects and randomly applied them straight to the board. I used a painter's knife to streak them around. After several colors I used more of the rice paper to dab and wipe. The whole time, it was sprinkling, and the rain started to mix the paints in different ways. It was a very relaxing and goal-less process that was interrupted by a random raccoon encounter. After that I cleaned up and let the board finish drying in the shed.

I did this whole thing with no real end-result in mind. I did come up with some ideas that evolved over time, mainly using the technique of covering the paint in some places and then spraying the rest black again--but we shall see what I think of it later. If none of that works, I can always spray it all black again and start from scratch. Either way, I'm really excited to see where this project leads itself.

I'll update as I it progresses more. I have until September, but am shooting to have it done a lot sooner.