: I love the art work. Where did you get the designs? What paint did you use
: for the designs and how much time did you need to paint them? Again,
: beautiful hybrid design. Long live imagination!!!

My wife, Alice, did the art work -- she's a stained glass artist. I'll let her answer your questions.

One comment first, however: the kayak was built from a hybrid kit from
Newound Woodworks.

Here's Alice:
Stained glass has nothing to do with this, however. It was based on reading and
looking at pictures in at least a dozen books on Northwest Coast Indian art. The more I got into it
the more I realized what a sophisticated and elegant art it is, and now I worry lest some Kwakiutl
or Haida artist see what I've done and say "but that's ALL wrong! The styles are ALL mixed up!"
(Right, they are. I know; I'm sorry.)

Anyhow, I ended up making stylizations of five water creatures, based on all the ideas I found in the
books: orca, beaver, otter, cormorant, and salmon. We painted the hull with Benjamin Moore alkyd
porch and floor paint, and then I found cans of Chinese red, black and blue enamel (that means
alkyd, not latex) paints left over from other projects and used them. We're planning to put a
couple of coats of varnish over it for protection and to make it look "mellow". Our first time on the
water resulted in some scrapes and scratches, so protection will be good; we also have to acccept
that boats rapidly become "antiqued" with use.

How long did it take? I fussed around with research and designing for the three or four months that
Paul was building the boat. Doing the full-size drawing on paper, which I then transferred to the
hull with graphite paper, took several weeks of "spare" time, and the painting in fact went relatively
quickly - say one color per side per day, and I let each color dry before painting the next (there are
only three colors plus the background).

Other tempting sources for design motifs include Inuit decorative carving on whalebone, and the
designs on the clothing of the people of the Amur River area in eastern Asia.

There! I'll bet that's a lot more about it than you wanted to know! If you are interested in
Northwest Coast Indian design, I'll be happy to tell you which books I found most helpful.

Good luck, Alice