Day #304 - Have you seen him?

Today I pay homage to my roots, you know what they say "once a skater, always a skater" and it's so true. Not a day passes where I don't think about skating past or present.

I wanted to try to combine two of the big powerhouses in skating in my years, Powell Peralta and Santa Cruz.

I loved the Bones Brigade but I thought the Powell decks were a bit shit, well, especially when you compared them to the Santa Cruz boards, the SC decks just had more pop, the Powell decks seemed to flex too much and over time the concave would go flat, in fairness though they lasted long enough to go flat whereas an SC deck would disintegrate steadily over a couple of months and before you knew it they had no tail, same goes for Vision (Gonz decks were easily the best for street).

But how could you go past the Santa Cruz range, their artist is one of my biggest influences, Jom Phillips is second to none in the surf/skate/rock industry for illustration, he invented the Santa Cruz logo and branding, he designed the logo for international trucks and he drew the greatest piece of skate art ever in the Screaming Hand. He is still going today and his style is faultless.

I can guarantee that every single kid that skated in the 80s was emblazoned with his artwork, the Roskopp face, the Hosoi rocket air, the Cellblock skates, Slimeballs, Speed Wheels, Indy's, Santa Cruz, the list just goes on and on.

I never grow tired of looking through his work.

Then on the flip was Powell, the marketing megamachine, they too had 1 artist V. Courtland Johnson whom was/is phenomenal, he drew skulls better than anyone I've seen before or since and he was responsible for my all time favourite graphic which is the Hawk Skull on the iron cross background, Tony Hawk's 2nd pro model graphic and his highest selling board of all time. Truly an epic piece.

What's more amazing is that these guys had no internet for reference, nor peers producing the same type of stuff and they had to produce art the would easily translate for screen printing and not look crappy.

What's probably the saddest for me is that these companies would have made squillions from these works with very little ever getting back to the original artist.

This is my poor imitation of Jim's Cellblock Skates piece although I tried to substitute Animal Chin instead of the convict.

The more I look at it the less I like it.

Oh Well.