i feel like every time i start a new mural like it's the first there are definitely different obstacles that i'm having to kind of work around with every location being its own unique surface or environment all right i think i can live with it [Music] with the skinny raven mural it was a collaboration with ash adams a local photographer i think i was out there day and night for about two weeks [Music] it was pretty stressful because i really didn't know how it would turn out and mainly because of the texture of the wall was just so rough it's called stucco where it's like painting on velcro but what i found is you know i jumped into it and i felt like i could pull off the vision i had with what i was dealt with as far as challenges oh man you know you spend x amount of hours doing that pattern it eventually becomes like you're on autopilot or it's like a second nature where the effort that goes into it is less the image itself it was more about the land and the people but we were using skateboarding as a way to express that you know i think i was three years old my brother got a skateboard and i tried it out and it's just one of those things that it just felt so good i realized all i wanted to do was skateboard just the whole process of like coming up with an idea and believing in something that you can do and then executing it or applying yourself to the idea i think as soon as i got hold of a video camera it basically led to like the next two decades of a lot of filming you go out filming with your friends and as soon as you get home you all crowd around the tv and you review the footage was something i found really enjoyable and i think it's led to a lot of different things that i do if there was one thing i had to like say skateboarding taught me most is just like how to look at things and how to you know just approach challenges in your life i was 25 years old and just really confident on my skateboard and just you know out of the blue i blew out my left acl on my knee oh i could feel this heavy depression coming on kind of a confusion with what do i do with myself that's where i think i found drawing i spent like literally a year drawing from the moment i wake up to going to sleep and then repeating it it was taking my mind off of skateboarding basically [Music] my friend jen had this zine she was making it was a local punk scene called ak inc she asked me if i wanted to do a comic strip for the back cover of it the comic strip was about a soda called good drink and good drink basically just like wreaked havoc as it got bigger and bigger and more popular it kind of set the setting for what i would be drawing to this day moments where humanity is kind of getting through it and surviving for me drawing has protected me in so many ways now i see my daughter and she's drawing like all the time i've said so many times to her like please don't stop you go through life and if you have it all or if you have nothing it's like if you have something that you spend your time doing that you enjoy you really don't need much else a lot of people forget how short life is what better way to spend it than doing what you enjoy [Music] you