Fan Service

Click images for much larger versions.



The Rockland Center for the Arts folks are doing some auction, so they asked a few teachers to decorate skateboards. As the 'young and hip' member of the faculty (at nearly 37 and I don't even want to know how low my hipness quotient is), they wanted me to do one. So I went all 'manga' on it, which is unlike me, but it seemed appropriate. Originally, I was planning on having it be much more explicit, but I dialed it down - the manga style is useful for that, because it's sexy without being overtly sexual.

A whole hat full of names suggested themselves to me for this one: "Fan Service," "Money Shot," - but I ended up going with "Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black." It was actually a bit of serendipity that led to this color scheme. As usual, I waited until the last moment to do this, and when I raided our art closet at around 1 AM yesterday, I saw that almost all the acrylic was dried up, save for four student-grade tubes, in the comics-coded colors of black, yellow, blue and red. I'd originally planned to render the image in shades of all green, but once I laid down the first reds on the figure, I could see that any subtlety in the color choices would be totally against the spirit of the thing, and just went for the big contrast. All paints went right on the brush and the skateboard, straight out of the tube.

Speaking of big contrast, though, it's amusing to note that the blue and red pigments are almost identical in strength... meaning that no red/blue colorblind people are going to be bidding on this:


Anyhow, I worked for a couple of hours last night, then a couple this morning (it needed several coats), and got it to them only a day after the original deadline. Although I note that I was one of the first to do so, so I'm guessing that the deadline was 'flakey artists friendly,' if you know what I mean. Sort of like that one friend you always end up lying about the time they're supposed to meet you at the restaurant, because they always show up half and hour late, no matter what. Supposedly, the show was being hung today, but the other show hadn't yet been taken down and the handful (maybe five) of finished skateboards they had was only a fifth of what they'd been advertising.

Still: I'm done. We'll see how much this goes for. "Not much" would be my guess. Got no plans on Sunday the 11th? Come out and get your own Dave original for way cheap:

http://www.rocklandartcenter.org/events2.html

I'm hoping someone actually uses it for a real skateboard...

Thanks to Yesenia, for posing - female anatomy isn't my strong suit. Note: all of those preparatory materials have been destroyed. And thanks to Yukito Kishiro, because I also needed reference for a good manga girl face, and his Battle Angel Alita fit the bill. Quite a nicely refined series of lines for facial drawings he's developed - the open-mouthed pout of surprise is exactly what I needed. Please note that I adapted, didn't copy. Please. I'm an artiste.

D.