I’m 17 years old and I’ve
been to three different high schools over the last four years. The first two I
attended weren’t for me so I kept looking for a school where I could pursue my
dreams. Then I found Oasis Skateboard Factory.
It’s now my first semester
at OSF. We started off building and designing a personal board and marketing
our own brands. The brand that I designed is called Smilez. The brand represents my personality and the
important people in my life who are always smiling. They are the people that
keep me going. I decided to use Smilez for my brand because I wanted to send out a message to people that Smilez is about wearing a smile: the best thing you can
wear everyday!
For my personal board I
chose to make a pintail longboard. It’s made of seven layers of hard-rock maple
and pressed with Roarockit air press technology. For the first step of the
graphic, I stained the wood black. The second step was to stencil the design of
the three characters. These characters are a representation of people in my
life who inspire me. The third step was to stencil the background design, which
was a graffiti piece representing my brand Smilez. I had the letters wrap around the board so it would
just look like a design rather than letters.
This is my first board I
made at OSF and I’m really proud of the outcome of the design. I’ve already
learned so many new things this semester and look forward to what Oasis has in
store for me!
