a couple of months ago I was searching the web and this forum here to find out about any techniques for applying your own design on your surfboard. now I eventually put it to practice and I figured I would write some instructions in case anyone else is intending to do something similar and could use some hints at hand.
the supplies I used were:
- soft pencil (I used 4B) and eraser
- markers (I used two colours in my design, red and black, so I bought two each, a thick and a thin one). the brand I used is "Edding" which is similar to Uni-Ball (Posca) although it's not acrylic paint. I was a little worried first if it stays on the board at all but I couldn't find appropriate coating to protect it - after all it turned out to stay on quite alright.
- tape
- a wax scratcher
- a carton with a straight edge to use as a ruler (for the longer lines)
so what I did was to at first develop a design on paper (there you can also think about which colours you would like etc.). after lot of paper wasted I came up with the following design that I now wanted to apply to my board:
before applying, of course you need to meticulously clean the surface of your board, any wax that remains will later on cause any paint to scratch off easily if it sticks at all.
then I would recommend to use a very soft pencil to draw the basic structures on the board first. any areas you do not wish to paint you should tape (in my case the logo and the red line around the board). a wax scratcher might help you to apply the tape accurately.
after you have your pencil draft on the board and taped everything, you are ready to use the markers. first you should outline everything that needs to be filled with paint and fill everything out later, but basically that depends on your design. I did the outlines first, filled in the colour and then went over the outlines again.
then it only has to dry (at least 2 days, to make sure) and soon you are ready to hit the beach:
and that's pretty much it, I had to apply several layers of paint because the markers I used were not ideal, probably best are markers based on acrylic paint (as it is recommended all over the web), where you can also apply some coating afterwards to protect it (also, it would be better to seal the paint for applying wax over it and scratch it off again without harming the paint).
nevertheless, it worked out fine for me. the colours did fade a little in the sun after 2 weeks use, but all in all I am still very happy with it. if you use your board every day and take it back and forth, you should definitely apply something more resistant.
after 2 weeks use:
anyways, I hope this description was interesting or useful to some of you
Noahhh
