I'm currently in my final year of High School and I'm doing skateboard designs and digital prints for my major work. So I'll have a series of digital works accompanied with a interpretation of each on a skateboard. I'll be doing at least four of these.
The problem is however that I'm not sure about how I'm going to do a detailed surreal design on a skate deck. I could probably use spray paints with templates for backgrounds and such but how should I go about applying the details?

Any info would be great. :)

Skateboards are usually made of regular plywood. you should at first lightly sand out rough spots. Then use a primer because the wood will soak the paint up like a sponge. After the primer is sprayed on you should spray one layer of your background color, wait for it to dry and spray another so that it stays that color.
Then you should cut all the details out of cardboard and spraypaint it on piece by piece.

OR

make a digital image the shape and size of your skateboard and then go to websites like www.deckpeck.com or www.boardpusher.com to get them to print it.

OR

you could try it on a cheap board, just try different materials, check if the image is waterproof and doesn't wear off. maybe it works good enough with just spraypaint and maibe ink works.

I did my board a couple years back with regular spraypaint, detail gets less but if you are good you can make it any way you want to.

Cheers man! That's some great info. I honestly can't thank you enough! 8D

Could you also tell me what would be the best type/brand of spraypaint for the job? I'll probably test them out on a dodgy spare deck but some heads up would be great.

I don't have much experience painting onto WOOD itself so I can't really give advice on prep or paint itself... I can offer a couple tips on the details...

For getting details and even the bigger designs down, I would use friskit. You can get it at your art or hobby story (common item for airbrush artists), and its basically a film that's tacky on one side (so it sticks to whatever you're painting), and it comes attached to a paper. What you can do is draw, lightbox, or maybe even print (iffy) your design onto the paper part and then cut out your stencil with an exacto. Since its tacky, if you have bits floating around in the middle of the stencil, its okay, cause you can just stick them down where you need them.

A good tip on that would be to start with drawing your design LIGHTLY on the board, then tranfering that to tracing paper, and then use a lightbox to transfer that to your frisket. That way you know exactly where to put all those floating bits.

Frisket comes in all kinds of sizes, but I most commonly find it in 8.5 x 11, so you might need a couple sheets just to cover the board for one stencil (crazy!)-- if you're working on a small portion though, you can just frisket the part you need, and use masking tape and paper to cover the rest. I'd recommend frisket over carboard stencils, etc, simply because its tacky and sticks down to the surface so you want have any paint blowing under it, etc.

You could also use masking tape to shape out the designs as well. Just carfully guiding it with your finger. Get some narrow and some thicker tape... the narrow you can really fine tune the way it goes down and actually get curves, the thicker will just cover large areas. I would get the kind that is most friendly to paint (IE, its not going to pick up dry paint when you peel it off).

The third option-- and you can use all these in tandem-- for the REALLY fine details, is liquid frisket (sometimes called miskit frisket, I think). If you do watercolors you might be familiar with it. Theres a lot of different types (including some specifically for airbrushing, etc)-- I just get the Winsor Newton stuff I find at Michael's, which I believe is designed for water color, but I've used it with acrylics and ink. You might want to do some tests with whatever paint your using, to make sure it doesn't react adversely to any solvents in the paint. If it works out-- it basically is the similar concept to frisket and stencils in general. The difference is you paint it directly onto the surface. It dries, you apply your paint, and then you peel it way. Since its liquid and you're applying it with a brush, you can get really fine details that way.

Beyond that, depending on how complex your design is, make sure you plan it well. There's proably a number of layers and steps involved, so planning that ahead always helps. And don't be to anxious--- wait for the paint to properly dry for each step, you don't want to peel back tape or frisket to find out that your previous layer, while dry to the touch, hasn't properly cured/bonded and you're peeling that back too.

hopefully there's a tip in there somewhere.

Wow, that's some detailed info! ^_^
I wouldn't have a clue about that stuff. My airbrush experience was limited to some minor technical drawing things back in highschool.


I'd approach painting a skateboard in a very simple old fashioned way-
-Sand it ultra smooth.
-Prime the bare wood with white acrylic.
-Sand that smooth.
-Prime it again.
-Sand that smooth too.
-Draw on the design using pencil
-then I'd paint it on using acrylic art paint, using brushes.
-Cover the surface with a hard clear polyurethane coating. (maybe some of that two part stuff?)

-Or maybe use enamel paint instead of acrylic for that extra durability? ...but then with a polyurethane cover it'll have that protection anyway...?

Cheers Mattchee! That actually covered allot of questions. Would you know more about which airbrushes to use though? And getting the right colours and such? I've used spray paint but I've never used an airbrush...

I don't really know what paint works best, the people at the store should know though. Just don't go with the cheapest brand, that stuff always looks... cheap.

Thanks guys. Ozone had a good tip too. I'll see what's available for myself and test them all on a spare deck.

My school might be ordering in an airbrush for myself so some tips and product suggestions would help too.

Thanks again guys! :)