Longboard Line Up

Longboard Line Up

original oil painting, 12x12, SOLD

Elliott Fouts Gallery

A group of vintage longboards, lined up on the sand, before a surf competition in Santa Cruz. A classic longboard is the most traditional surfboard shape. Surfers originally rode longboards in the 1950s and 1960s in Malibu and Waikiki. They typically range from 8 feet to 12 feet in length. 

Painting surf boards is a challenge, similar to painting a portrait of a face. Everything is symmetrical and every surfboard is different.  There's a stringer, a thin strip of wood that runs down the middle of the surfboard and increases the strength and rigidity of the board. The front of the board is called the nose and the back section is the tail.. The fins are positioned inside a fin box in the tail and come in many different shapes and sizes.  The sides of the surfboard are called rails and vary in thickness according to the design.

The most complicated variable of the surfboard is the rocker. The rocker is the curvature of the surfboard in profile. It has been labeled as the single most important design element in a surfboard. It is a complex combination of compound curves. The rocker certainly complicates a painting of a surfboard!