Neil is a skateboarder and artist who illustrates and paints

 

When I think about it, I picture the origin of true skateboard graphics as the time when skateboarders started too design their own pro board graphics and put their personality in the mix like Neil Blender did.

 

The graphics that he and others produced were so out there and in your face, unlike the earlier boring “type font graphics”.

 

Most skateboard graphics blow my mind and always have done, looking at new and old board graphics in skate shops is one of my favourite things to do, it’s like going to a gallery of artistic and controversial illustrations that you can’t see anywhere else. There’s the screenprinting application used in skateboard graphics that is not even used very much today.

 

Skateboards usually have by far the best screen printed designs and each board is a piece of art worth thanks to great companies like Lovenskate. The layers of ink make images stand out and it hurts to skate a screen printed board just knowing the effort that’s gone into making that board.

 

A lot of artists inspire me to make stuff.

 

Fos‘ Heroin skateboards graphics and his Altamont and Baker stuff really stand out from the crowd, it’s all so sick and scratchy.

 

Jacob Ovgren cracks me up and his thought process to come up with those characters are amazing I don’t know how he does it..

 

Marc McKee, Sean Cliver, Jon Horner, Andy Smoke, Gonz and also French make work that gets me stoked. I help out with a night called Remake Remodel, it’s a tribute night to musical greats.

 

Whilst we did our Bowie night, we were blasting his music the whole week. I made and painted signs and created 3D sculptures for the audience to interact with and Bowie’s music got me hyped. It was cool to build and paint works devoted to him.

 

I really like The No Comply Network I think it’s rad.

 

By putting artists out there people can see an alternate and creative side to skateboarders, most have one and this is a great platform for it.