Skateboarding Calligraphy "FREEHAND" by Takahiro Morita

I had a chance to shoot Skateboarding Calligraphy by Takahiro Morita, Professional skateboarder and film maker from Japan. [comment from Takahiro Morita] What I wanted to express through my work is to show the lines that we skaters unintentionally draw with our boards. I wanted to express the law, speed, emotional ups and downs, the amount of heat of my skating by drawing lines with my board. I also wanted to express numerous other things with each line. The first thing I did before working on this FREEHAND, was to actually skate the exhibition space in Ichihara Lakeside Museum. Then I imagined the space that is going to be the canvas and started designing transitions for it. And then I tried to figure out how to make a drawing pen with a skateboard. The reason why I chose a brush for the pen is because it work the best to express the strength and weakness of the drawing pressure. It's a pen, but it consists of 1000 hairs which makes it possible to express delicate lines. I tested many times and came to a conclusion that the tip of the brush needs to have enough hair and it needs to be long enough to draw lines with a skateboard. As for choosing sumi ink, I needed to use fine grained paint as possible to draw long lines. I couldn't use paint that dried too quick and as I tested numerous times, sumi ink worked the best. The way I skate is not about skating good or bad skill. it's about expressing your emotions on a skateboard. Essentially the lines of skaters that get hooked with momentary pleasure is something you can't see. But by drawing them with dynamic lines, people can see the speed, aggression, emotional ups and downs and amount of heat. By doing so viewers can imagine the actual skating and it would be possible to convey the appeal of skateboarding in many ways. The reason I chose FREEHAND as the title is because I wanted to express the freedom of my skateboarding as well as my feelings and emotions. I made this exhibition to convey my aesthetics and also freedom, depth and appeal of skateboarding. The thing that can't be expressed with footage is the real scale, the amount of sumi ink that spread in the space, and also the details of the marks that I left with my skateboard. I hope everyone would get interested in my work.