“I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt good”

Hi, my name is Nobby and I’m a Junior Art Director at RPM, here to talk about two things: skateboarding and improvisation.

When I was 14 (when I began my skateboard story) there were no waves where I lived and I wanted to surf. So I surfed a skateboard. Then when I turned 15 and my brother passed his driving test I discovered an attraction to speed; but I was too young to drive. So I took that skateboard to the top of the biggest hill I could find and went down it until I was fast enough (and brave enough) to overtake the very cars I wanted to drive. I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt good.

Backwards nose-manual - because the front didn’t have a kick.

This never ending search for my own path has bought me to a whole universe of styles and disciplines in the world of wood and wheels that is mostly known as longboarding. I cruise, I dance, I slide, I downhill, I freestyle, and I mostly do a blend of all these things and make it all up, and that’s the beauty – the making it up, literally as you go along. It is a constant flow of untethered creation.

So for me skateboarding is the purest form of creativity. When I stand at the top of a hill there are limitless ways of skating just that one hill – a never ending series of lines, slides, early grabs and hippie jumps. I could skate that one hill my entire life and never repeat an exact run. And the beauty is that there isn’t just one hill, there are thousands.

My a selection of my full quiver of boards.

And just as an artist has his styles and development, a songwriter his instruments and genres, I have my boards and… me. The moments are fleeting, or memorable. They are innovative, or classic. They are spontaneous, or planned for years. But most of all they are pure imagination that I have created and no-one will ever do it the same as I do.

A 5-0 on a 3 foot quarter.

Everyday I get to think, write, draw and laugh – my creative skills are paid for, and it’s one hell of a feeling. But no matter what brand, what project or what media I’m working on it all comes back to a simple world – improvisation, or as a more professional aged version of myself calls it: problem-solving. This ability originates from my skating, it comes from having to do things in a way no-one else does, having to be instantaneously creative for hours at a time. You see a bench? I see a jump, a grind, a slide, a challenge, an opportunity. This entire concrete jungle we live in is one big opportunity, so to use my native tongue *ahem* if you wanna go shred some rad gnarballs and nail a few brews after give me a hollah yeah?

An early grab on a 5 foot quarter.