Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) vs Skate Graphics
ローブロウ / スケートデッキ・グラフィック
Both sit in Illustration Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism)
Painting from outside the museum, schooled on hot rods, comics, tattoos and B movies. It renders pop memory in exacting oil technique, and Juxtapoz magazine gave it a home under the name Pop Surrealism.
Skate Graphics
Graphics made for the tall canvas of a deck's underside, drawn in the knowledge that grinding will wear them away. Bold outlines and horror-tinged exaggeration, typified by Phillips's Screaming Hand, built a heraldry for the street.
| Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) | Skate Graphics | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1979– | 1980s– |
| Family | Illustration Styles | Illustration Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Pop-culture iconography / Precise classical technique / Uneasy humor / Street-born heraldry | Tall deck-bottom composition / Bold-outlined characters / Horror mixed with humor / Grace about being worn away |
| Best used for | Artwork for record labels, skate brands and tattoo shops · Covers for shows or books that reject museum politeness outright | A tall surface needing a heraldic image identifiable from a distance · Youth merchandise wanting imagery that keeps value as it wears away |
| Type | Sign-painter and comic lettering rendered as carefully as the art | Brand name drawn as heavy lettering at the stroke weight of the art |
| Composition | A central face with the surround filled by emblem-like motifs | The subject run down the tall center axis, rounded ends cropping the image |
| Material | Oil gloss and smooth gradation, brushwork sanded away | A few screen colors overlaid, with knockouts letting the wood show through |
| Caution | Picking creepy subject matter while skipping the rendering craft turns the work into doodling that only wants to shock. | Leaning on fine detail loses the image the first time it grinds, so the more a board is ridden the less it is worth. |