Airbrush Technique Issue 22

AN ICON IN AIRBRUSH HISTORY by Liz French If you walk into the Shirt Shack at 1007 Main Street, Daytona Beach, Florida you walk back in time with John Roseboom, proprietor. With the music of the 50’s you bop into a place that is colorful and fun; John, himself, just waiting to widen the smile on your face. It appears that John is concentrating on his latest airbrushed creation, you notice the colorfully painted toilets sitting back to back in the center of the show room, you’re tired so you sit, you’re trying to decide what wonderful creative slogan or picture you want airbrushed just for you. All of a sudden a voice comes from the strategically placed commode making you jump and laugh at the same time. The voice you heard coming from the depths of the unconventional resting place, is none other than your host John Roseboom. With a sense of humor to match none John will keep you in stitches – airbrushed that is, he has been doing so for many, many years. John was a student at the John Haron Commercial Art School in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1957, while attending the Promotion Incorporated Auto Show in Indianapolis, he saw his future for the first time, “ I first saw painted tee shirts made by “Big Daddy Roth” from California,” recalled John. Not only did John and Big Daddy, become friends later on down the road but the idea that sprang in John head that day was the beginning of a lifetime of airbrushing tee shirts (among other things), hard work and fun. John went to school with his new idea boiling. “I wanted to airbrush shirts, so I checked out two airbrushes from the professor, bought three dozen tee shirts on Friday, and went to the local drag strip on Saturday. Arriving at 10 AM, I sold out by 9 PM making about $300. I went again on Sunday with three dozen more tee shirts at 9 AM and sold out again by 9 PM earning another $300. I sold the tee shirts for about $10 each. “On Monday at school the professor asked how I had done that weekend with the two brushes. I told him how well I had done and how much I had earned. He said he did not make that much in two weeks. I showed him the track amount for the two days, and he answered, ‘Mr. Roseboom, you are a ‘buck’ artist and will never earn a living painting pictures on tee shirts.’ The rest is history” John just lived a few miles from the drag strip. He saw the hundreds of thousands of people that came through going to the strip. It was probably a good thing that he started his airbrushing during the last half of his senior year; it didn’t interfere with his finishing school. It wasn’t long, however, before he was able to prove that professor wrong. Just a little while later John realized he could cut his set up time and increase his productive time by having everything ready to go. “I purchased a 30-foot concession trailer and framed the inside like a regular store. However, this store had wheels, and when I pulled onto my assigned location at the event, I only had to push the button inside that raised the 8’ X 28’ door, and everything was in place. Time for set up was about twenty to thirty minutes before I was ready for the first sale.” John’s business, painting shirts at the races expanded throughout Indiana and the surrounding states. John met the love of his life at a soc-hop in 1958. Betty, also artistic had been in her high school art league all through high school in South Central Indiana. It was love at first site and it wasn’t long before they married. “We painted side by side at weekend events. She took to the airbrush as if she was born with one in her hand”, boasts John about his wife of 50 years. “In 1962 and two boys later, we were still moving from event to event each weekend at drag strips and auto shows.” In 1963 the Rosebooms moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. They had decided running the circuit just wasn’t the way to run a tee shirt business. They found an empty building on Main Street and The Shirt Shack was established. John’s business grew by leaps and bounds, “we opened our second store in the same area in 1965 and a third location on Ocean Avenue in 1965. My wife would run the Daytona Beach stores, and I would take a group of art and sales staff, called “The Road Crew,” on the road. We would travel with the Goodings’ Million Dollar Midway, starting in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in early June. We would travel south playing twelve major fairs ending in Savannah, Georgia, in late October. Each of the three road crews where assigned one 30-foot concessions trailer and one 2-man living quarters. “

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Airbrush Technique Issue 22

Airbrush Technique Issue 22 Danyell Butler Lee Diaz C.S. Bailey Big Daddy John Roseboom - An Icon in Airbrush History Patrick Charuel Helmet Trim Natalie Lapelosa - How to Airbrush Hellboy on a T Shirt by Xzotic Ink Ashley Brayson

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