The Bikini Girl Fluke [NEW!!]

When Chris Stousland, the legendary artist who created the designs on the very first generation of painted Fluke ukes a few years ago, contacted us to ask if we'd be interested in including his latest batch of hand-painted Fluke designs, the Bikini Girl, Pineapple, Hawaiian Island, and Sycamore Bark Flukes, on our little Fluke Museum webpage, we eagerly agreed, and we asked him to tell us the story of his Fluke designs both old and new, and this is what he wrote:

After receiving one of the very first Flukes (with a solid green top) as a gift, I was inspired by the book "The Ukulele - A Visual History" to create a leopard-skin pattern design for my very own Fluke. I then brought it with me to a Ukulele Workship at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, where I actually met the folks who make the Fluke ukes, and they told me they had been thinking about doing the very same thing! So, in addition to the Leopard Fluke, I also created an Abstract Fluke with a design of intersecting triangles for them, and those two designs were included in the very first generation of painted Flukes!

The tops I make are created with hand-cut stencils and spray paint, which, oddly enough, is a technique I first developed when I lived in downtown Los Angeles and made graffiti pieces based on famous art masterpieces! This method allows me to make multiples quickly in bright flat colors, and, once a design is completed, I make tracings of each color and transfer it to an oil board, which I then cut out with an X-acto knife. Then, the final image is built up in layers as each color is sprayed on, similar, in a way, to a silkscreen print.

I guess what initially attracted me to painting the Fluke was being able to play a ukulele with my own artwork on it. I also love the challenge of designing a figure or landscape to fit on the unique Fluke shape -- as well as the simplification required to create stencils from a natural pattern (eg, pineapple or bark). And, to top it all off, I can even display the Fluke as a kind of painted sculpture, too, because it stands up all by itself!"

You can see more of Chris's fantastic Flukes, and you can even buy one, too, by clicking right here to visit his Fluke-tastic website!•