The best part about making boards for myself is that I can do what I want, be creative, get totally lost in the moment and not worry about anyone else’s agenda.With the passing of Hawaiian historian and artist Herb Kane, I started thinking about island cultures not only Hawaiian but Polynesian culture.Herb was a founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and designed the Hokule’a.After I had breakfast at Times Coffee Shop in the Ko’olau (Temple Valley) Shopping Center waiting for my wife, I walked past a Polynesian tattoo shop display window and the idea came to me. I wanted to capture or at least mimic the images of Polynesia.
I remembered that some of my friends received tattoos from Kahuna Kione Nunes, a famous tattoo artist that does it the traditional way.They told me that some sessions took eight hours with Kione and that they had to come back several times to complete.My friends tattoo went from his ankle, up his leg past his hip, across the small of his back and ended there for now.It will continue later up his back, over his shoulder and down his chest. It should tell the story of his family and his genealogy. But this is another story.
About the board” 9’3” x 15” x 24.5”x 16” x 4” big guy quad semi-gun shaped from the 9-3A US Blank. The bottom is a single concave to a double concave and it is very sight. This one I did with PE, green bottom and rails, yellow-gray swirl inlay and the artwork was done with plane old Posca pens.
I daughter did two panels and I did the rest. This was a great opportunity to bring out the inner child artist in me and get totally lost in the moment.I felt like I did when I was ten years old spending countless hours doodling.Needless this to say, this was a fun and rewarding project.
This is a big guy board so the dims are 9’3” x 15” x 24.5”x 16” x 4”. For the 9-2A and 9-9A, you might have to cut some lenght off the tail to get the tail wider. I like flat to v bottoms or single concave to a double concave bottoms done very suttle. I try to keep my bottoms very simple.
Beauty! Very inspiring…and intricate! Cool to see–it has gotten the gears in my head turning again!
I made a fish (a while back though I haven’t gotten around to finishing it) with a Tlingit style design I drew and seriously considered as a tattoo for about 5 years. Never quite convinced myself that I wanted it on my body forever, but really liked the design and wanted to see it go somewhere…so it is burned on the fish now:
I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing another wood burning design in a similar to polynesian vein, with the majority of the design concentrating on ulua, ono, or ahi…so I like fish
I love Native American art and those fishes look great. I was exposed to that style of art visiting American Indian casinos in the Northwest. (Of All places!) As far as tattoo on my body, I really think that suffering is optional and I perfer ink on my boards instead of my body. I like doing original art and I like tribial designs and also art from local artist. I even got permission to use Gyotaku fish prints from Naoki on several of my boards. Check out http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1028943. I don't do any commercial images. I love the board by MeliaKai Surfboards that has hand drawn Hawaiian style tattoo artwork on it.
I was thinking about working with tattoo artist to design boards with matching ink with their owners. Imagine a whole quiver of boards with you own personnal native tattoos on them.