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The Roger Wayland Project Gallery
DESIGN
"Design: Where does it come from?

As you start making your initial plans to build your first or any board you need to take your blinders off and start absorbing everything around you. If your main goal is to build a craft that is fast, look at objects that are sleek and smooth flowing. Try and translate those parts and pieces of what you see into your design. It is kind of like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. It just takes fitting a lot of different parts and pieces into your design. When I design things now I use parts from nature, and parts of man made items. I try to study flow. I am fortunate that where I ride waves we almost always have dolphins to watch. I learn a lot from their natural design. I also like going to aquariums and being able to observe different fish; the bluefin, or yellowtail, is an awesome design, very sleek and fast. For man made help look at the design on various aircraft, boats, cars, furniture, etc.; look at the way the curves are made. After a storm at our local beach, part of a tree (Palm?) washed up on shore. The branch had a great bowled out outline with an almost super fast keel look to it. I will incorporate the "design" of that piece of a tree into a paipo design one day. Always keep your eyes and mind open; new design ideas are everywhere around you. You just need to pick the small pieces of those designs and make them flow smoothly in your project.

Tools of Design:

I bought a big roll of brown paper at the local lumber yard. I think the contractors use it to protect floors with. I use it to lay out my designs on. The paper is thick enough that it lays out nice on the floor and allows you to draw and erase on it. I ahve also used grocery paper bags or newspaper to lay out projects. Cardboaord is also good when you get more serious and want a heavier duty template to cut something with. I also do some design work with clay. I bought a 5 pound block at the local art store. Not very expensive and as long as you keep it well wrapped up it will last a long time. I slice a piece off and start carving it up. I find it is very useful when you want to conceptulize a new design. You can make changes to it at will. If you don't like what you did, reroll the clay out and start over. No harm, no foul. When you get it to where you think you would like to build off it, just let your finished form sit in the sun for a while. It will kind of bake it and give you a more permanent model to work off."

-Roger Wayland
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Photos and Text Copyright (C) Roger Wayland.

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