Kentaro Yoshida + OBfive = One Epic Collaboration

Meet Kentaro Yoshida – illustrator, graphic designer, surfer, skater and all round legend.

After moving to Sydney’s Northern Beaches at the age of 18 from his hometown of Toyama, Japan, Kentaro has been making a sturdy name for himself on both Aussie and international shores, taking the world's of both personalised art exhibitions and exclusive brand collaborations by storm.

Passionate across both print and digital backdrops, he’s recently teamed up with the crew at OBfive to design and showcase his unique style of detailed skulls fused through surf culture. And yes, as you would have guessed, the graphics are incredible and truly pay homage to his clean, yet detailed inspirations.

Stoked to welcome the collection (you can shop it here), we caught up with the man himself to talk how the series first came to fruition, his inspirations and consistency of style, his favourite piece of the collection and more.

Yo Kentaro! Thanks for catching up! You’ve just dropped an epic collaboration with OBfive. How did this relationship come to life?

I was contacted by Kris the OBfive brand director a few months back and everything started from there. When I had a look at their product, it was great quality and made me wanna work with them straight away!

Your art is next level to say the least. Describe the inspiration behind each of these decks? Obviously, they stay true to your love for skeletons!

Yes, they wanted to keep my style on each artwork so I had really rough direction/idea for each deck and developed from there. Although both graphic has a different concept, I like both of them as both look different and way better from initial ideas and compliment the timber veneers perfectly.

Your artwork in general follows the same vibe. What is it that draws you to keeping your style so consistent?

I think in a way my artwork is gradually shifting and evolving (hopefully) but in general, I have a strong preference in choice of colors. For drawing style, it is influenced by Japanese comic style as it has smooth, clean and sometime bold line work.

What’s your favourite board from the collection and why?

I like the Kentaro Dread Sled cruiser with the surf skater skeleton in the deep barrel with skateboard. it doesn’t make sense but it kind of does make sense to the OBfive brand. I also like the colors and use of negative space for it.

You’ve worked with so many well renowned labels. What was it like teaming up with the legends at OBfive?

It’s been really good and Kris is a really good bloke so that easy to work with for me. Also they trust me and give me creative freedom all time so I can not to wait to get something done again with OBfive crew. And catch up for a couple of cold beers up on Gold Coast next time!