Jimbo Phillips: The Man Behind the Iconic Santa Cruz Skateboard Graphics

Artist Jimbo Phillips, 43, keeps a jar of hot peppers outside of his studio on Santa Cruz's east side. It's the price of admission: anyone who wants to enter has to eat a pepper first. 

"They're in the juice, you know, so you gotta like, reach in," Phillips said, laughing as he remembers a tradition that dates back to his youth.

Mandatory hot pepper consumption (wax peppers, usually; hotter than your average pepperoncini) isn't the only thing Jimbo's father, and the father of surreal skateboard art, Jim Phillips, passed down to his son.

By 18, Jimbo was designing skateboard graphics as an apprentice for his father at Santa Cruz Skateboards, and his graphic style has the familiar "bite" of his father's work. Nowadays, Jimbo Phillips' eye-popping graphics appear on skateboards sold all over the world, and last year his work for Volcom took him to art shows in Barcelona, Spain, and Bordeaux, France.

"I was like 'Ah, no one's gonna know me over [in Europe]' and then I get there and they're just like 'Skateboards! Santa Cruz Skateboards!'" Phillips said. "They already knew all about it and were stoked... I had no idea, you know. It was really cool."

Back on home turf, Phillips is standing in the courtyard at Indigital Recording Studios on the west side, where he has put together a show of his skate art for Santa Cruz's First Friday Art Tour. Bulging eyeballs, melting faces and infuriated monster snarls peep out from the shadows along the fence.

"Skateboarding pretty much has been part of my life my whole life, and then surfing as I got into teenage years... and then yeah, just kind of that wacky humor but along with kind of edgy imagery and stuff like that," he said.

"Edgy imagery" means boldy embracing the vulgar. Exposed brains, yellow teeth, and shamelessly protruding two-pronged tongues that happen to be shredded into pieces are signatures of Jimbo's work. Eyeballs are almost always bugging out, or more commonly, hanging from their sockets by a few tendrils. 

"I've always been into faces a lot, and then the eyeballs, first they were just popping and pretty soon they popped out, and then they were like going and doing their own thing, you know, the eyeball's like partying around the corner," he said, erupting into laughter again. 

"Eyeballs partying around the corner" pretty much sums it up: Phillips' graphics are a badass balance of aggressive gore and humor; a visceral expression of the human imagination. They are adrenaline-pumped images with a fearless edge—perfect for the bottom of a skateboard.

Luckily for Phillips, the demand for new graphics is as limitless as his imagination. While some people buy his skateboards as collector's pieces, most buy them to "thrash the crap out of them." 

"The skate cycle is short and fast so it keeps you on your toes. Kids, they churn 'em and burn 'em," Phillips said. "But that's kind of part of the nature of it. I like it. I like to see a board half shredded up, and I'll recognize the design, under the wheels. You see a little piece of it."

Growing up, Phillips consumed a steady diet of comics, monster movies and MAD magazines. And just like his dad, who created the iconic screaming hand graphic in 1984, Phillips' 10-year-old son Colby plays an important role in his creative process.

"I get his input all the time," Jimbo said of his son. "I'm like 'What do you think, is this cool or is this lame?'''

Naturally, Colby also draws, skates and surfs— "a chip off the old block" as his father puts it. He even sold one of his own paintings—"Sponge-Skopp!"—at July 6's show.

Phillips still surfs some mornings before sitting down at his drawing desk. The marine life he grew up with in the Monterey Bay finds its way into his work, in the form of octopus tentacles, trident-weilding sea gods and, stinging jellies, and of course, sharks. The poster he designed for the 2011 Cold Water Classic, an annual Santa Cruz surf contest, is a playful feast for the eyes.

Once he's had his coffee, Phillips first sketches in pencil, then defines the image in black pen on his light table. Right now he's working on a couple of new designs for Santa Cruz Skateboards as well as new graphics for Bell Helmets.

"Sometimes it can be looser than other times, it depends on how well I can see it in my head, you know, sometimes I can't see it as well so I gotta work on it a little more... sometimes I can just float over it and then it all works out. It's different for different pieces," he said. 

And although the Mountain Dew he and his old man used to pound at the studio has been replaced by Odwalla fruit juice, the pepper jar remains.