Yo what’s up I’m a new student at OSF and I find myself liking the art and skateboarding world and this classroom is the perfect place to be in for the fact that you are surrounded by upcoming artists and teachers that will open your mind up to those worlds. This is my first board that I imagined and executed myself. My brand “Ramp Tramp” exists to empower people to skate anywhere without the fear of stereotyping. I believe everyone, bros and broads, are equal in the culture of skateboarding. This graphic represent two characters: the male character is rockin’ a hot pink bikini; the female character is killin’ it in some sick skater gear. I purposefully swapped what they stereotypically would be seen wearing to show how as women are still treated as objects and ornaments in the skate world.
This board was made with 7 maple veneers. The bottom layer was spraypainted with a limited colour palette that represents an old style pop/punk feeling that I’m trying to reflect in my Ramp Tramps brand. The graphic was designed as a mirror image of the two characters to represent leveling out the playing field. I wanted to make my logo look like a sticker, so I made the background a bit bigger to give the contour more pop and contrast. The style of my graphic is inspired by Bikini Kill (a riot grrrl band) and cartoons including Family Guy and Rick & Morty animations. I applied my graphic using a tape stencil and aligned each layer using carbon paper tracings. Cutting stencils can really suck sometimes and probably causes carpet Tunnel Syndrome (ha), but it’s a really effective and easy way to get an image on a board.
I am happy with how this board turned out. Through the process I found that you really need to follow each step and spend extra time to align everything. You also need to be aware of cut marks being too deep; next time I will have less of a heavy hand! My next board will be 500 times better as I learned a lot about the process. I am super stoked to start to develop a logo and get input from my mentors at Anomaly.
