HOW TO Paint a Skateboard Deck by Nic Mac

hey I'm Nick Mack a freelance illustrator from London and I'm gonna show you how I created this custom skate deck [Music] here it is naked so what do you do with a naked board you want to sand it down first nothing too overboard or strong in terms of level of sandpaper it's just to smooth out and ensure there's no varnish or wax of any kind on it that might repel the pee it's unlikely but it might and it's good to remove the mites I then get ready to prime it so that it's ready for painting tape up the hole so that it doesn't drip through and attach tin cans but you can use anything you can that will keep it raised this is just so that the edges don't touch any surface and it won't stick when the paint dries gesso time [Music] it's always hard to know exactly how much you need with paint but it's only a small amount especially because I water it down to so that it's easier to apply and ensures that it's not too thick and clunky [Music] [Music] after that's dried I applied another coat and you can do this multiple times if you want a very clean white background to start with which is what I was gonna do but halfway through I actually decided on a different idea that involves spray paint which wouldn't really have needed the gesso so I took it outside indecisive artists say what are they like I'm giving the gesso a sand and this is not because of the spray-painting always sand your gesso layer as it smooths it out and removes any ridges or lumps and just give it a wipe to remove any dust here we go now I'm very new to spray pain as you'll be able to see with my pretty weak application and how patchy it was coming onto the board but I just kept going with it and added another color for a subtle gradient effect I did research how to do this and how to angle the can but this was my first time and as with all things I definitely need some practice but after a while it was starting to look better and it was blending the way I wanted it to was that a rookie using to dance yes yes it was you want to make sure you hold the can upside down and spray until it becomes clear this cleans out so that it doesn't get clogged [Music] back to the desk and I hit it with a layer of matte medium which almost acts the same way gesso would it just ensures there's a layer there that paint and paint markers are going to be able to adhere to more easily nice once it was dry it did feel a lot rougher than I thought almost a bit spiky so I decided to do something that I wouldn't recommend but this is what this video is for if anything it's to tell you how not to do things I had decided on trying out a gloss varnish thinking it would make it smoother as I know I wanted to use pasta pens and smooth surfaces tend to fare well with them but you'll see later on what happened with it and how it didn't really help and after it was dry the texture was pretty much the same so it really wasn't the best view but let's carry on and ignore that little mistake for now it's time to clear up everything for the next step which is to roughly plan out the idea I take a photo on my iPad and draw on it but I'll just talk to you properly later on about how that went [Music] so I've drawn up some things on the iPad I left it pretty open I didn't spend too long and I just wanted to sort of draw something up to kind of get a rough idea of how I would draw it I knew I wanted to draw a bird I was kind of inspired by a piece I did recently and wanted to draw that across a skateboard I thought it would look really good horizontal that's what I wanted to do and that's what I was trying to do on the iPad just kind of see how it would fit it across because it's a really narrow shape so but I'm just gonna free freehand it and just sort of see how it goes as I'm drawing it I'm not gonna plan it too much I'm gonna use pencils some acrylic paint and POSCO pens mainly I think for the line work I'm just going to use pasta pens let's see we'll see how it goes but yeah I'm just gonna have fun with it and not really plan it too much so let's go first tool is a graphite pencils markup of rough lines [Music] Oh this helps once you're done with the line work you're ready the rest of the steps and literature's to get stuck in and make art [Music] line work time I gotta say that I mean it's pretty obvious really that this is my favorite bit to do I know it's still creating when you're doing the background and varnishing and sounding like that that is still creating that is still part of it it's part of what it is to make this type of art but this is the art that this is the bit where you're just getting stuck in and enjoying it and just watching it grow and develop as you go and making it up as you go it's my favorite thing to do you know I liked that with this one I didn't have a massive plan apart from how the bird was gonna kind of fit and how it was gonna kind of look but I definitely left space for adding things that I wasn't expecting be yeah it's cool it's fun and if you're watching this and trying to find out how to do a skateboard and just want to see how other people have done it if I know that's what I did I know that's how I got my research done on this it's so fun to watch other people do stuff and I can only hope that this helps inspire and helps you feel confident to do your own [Music] apart from the rough shape and placement I just improvised the details as I went seeing what works best and building on it until it felt right [Music] I found a brush tip pasta pot which was pretty good for second coating over the white and lightly applying paint softly [Music] I went over the big black parts with matte medium again because this is where the gloss paint had tripped me up because the paint was cracking slightly and you could only really see it wherever the black Posca pen was so applying this and letting it dry before a second coat of paska ensured the able to stay smooth and solid and not have any cracks in between [Music] [Applause] [Music] my top tip is to then spray it with a varnish instead of brushing anything on as the paint from the posture can smudge and ruin your artwork this way the spray coats the work evenly and seals everything up and then after that strike that really frees you up to apply any varnish or resin or anything else that you want without worrying about it bleeding or being smudged that's it for this video but as you can see I did resin this skateboard and if you want to see that then check out the links to Dickies this skateboard was part of a series of how-to videos are made for them one of which was how to resin the skateboard and this was said skateboard I'd love to know your thoughts on this piece so please comment below and all that's left to say is a massive thanks for watching and I'll catch you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Nic Mac

Views: 224,857

Rating: 4.971199 out of 5

Keywords: painting a skate deck, painting a skateboard deck with acrylics, spray painting a skateboard, custom skateboard, custom skateboard deck, custom skateboard build, custom skateboard graphic, Posca paint pens, posca paint pen art, customising your skateboard, step by step, how to, tutorial, relaxing, art process, artist, illustrator, satisfying video, satisfying video to make you sleep, female artists, blank skateboard, blank skate deck, drawing, skateboard art, nic mac, video

Id: d4sbN490CtA

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020