It was a Monday morning at college, the last week before the Easter holidays. We were doing some painting in class using pieces of cardboard as palettes. Once we finished, Stefan was just messing about on his fingerboard and we fashioned a pretty crude quarter pipe out of the palettes and some masking tape.
We talked about how intense it'd be if we actually made the ramp properly, and paired with the alternative fate to die in boredom (sit in the canteen), we decided we would! Plans got out of hand pretty fast and blood splatter was mentioned. First we added a nice flatbank to one side of the quarter pipe and papier mached the whole structure so far.
At this point Lewis found us working through our lunch break and although confused at first, was quickly excited by the idea and got to painting a sweet cardboard billboard. We used thick wire for some supports and a top edging for gnarly grinds.
We then added a steeper ramp flush to the other side of the quarter pipe.
Once we had all the basic structures, we covered the whole thing in papier mache again but with a stronger and smoother paper for a surface you could properly pop and roll on. We also punched in two holes on top for the metal supports of the billboard to slot into.
Next was to spray it. First with a primer and then a lighter coat.
Then we put the billboard on and glued down some metal wire as coping.
Once we had most of the main construction and the base colour done, Lewis added some illustration. It's of our friend Grace, as a slug.
To create perfectly flush roll ins we used sheets of plastic, sprayed metallic grey and then staple gunned to the edges of every ramp. We even used black oil pastel and made some scratches for authentic wear 'n tear.
Our friend George saw what we were doing, went off and came back with an A3 backdrop of a park.
Then we asked our friend 'Size' to help us out.
By this time everything construction wise was done that we could do, and although we have plans to let people add more art to it as time goes on, that'll naturally take time so maybe I'll post more photos in the future. We spent all our free time at college from Monday to Wednesday, but it was so totally worth it and I think there's already plans to make more and better stuff. It was fun, fairly easy and free - as it turned out, everything was either recycled or 'borrowed' from the art department!
