Wild Swimmers Print

The Tamblyn Girls is a design from my Vintage Surf set of illustrations and is inspired by wooden bellyboard surfing. A couple of surf girls splashing into the water with their wooden belly boards.

This print is a perfect gift for someone who loves the sea, and who loves to surf with wooden belly boards. Do you remember learning to surf with a wooden board when you were growing up? Do you still have a wooden board in your garage?

Best seller Olive Augusta is one of my designs from my Vintage Surf set of illustrations. This print would make the ideal gift for someone who loves the water, whether it is swimming in the sea, or ponds, or lidos, or surfing with traditional wooden boards. Belly boarders love this print, and I’m often told that they had a hat like this flowery swim hat, or that they still have their wooden boards in the garage that they learnt to surf with.

My grandmother was called Olive Augusta, and although I don’t have a photo of her in a flowery swim hat, I like to think that she would have protected her perfectly coiffed hair in something very beautiful and rubbery against the salty seawater!

My illustrations are inspired by my family’s wooden board surfing heritage. My grandparents (Arthur Roy and Olive Augusta) both grew up in Perranporth in Cornwall, and my grandmother’s family started surfing and making wooden boards after the First World War. I remember my great Uncle (also called Arthur) taking his wooden belly board down to the beach at Perranporth when he was well into his 70s! His son told me recently that Uncle Arthur had made his own Malibu surf board in the 1950s.

George is my new guy, he is modern vintage Cornish. He wears his hair in a quiff and sports a magnificent beard. A dapper kind of chap, he loves living by the sea, and when he’s not in it he is doing something creative like whittling a wooden spoon or cooking fresh mackerel on an open fire on the dunes, watching the sunset.