Post flix here. I'll get it started. jam tonight, wet paint gallery. 4th st and McKinley St.

I got a painting in there.

Here's some fliks...

OK I suck and u can't post images on here... at least I don't think.

Wheres the pics at?

ADRIAN WHAT HEADS IN THE GRAFF COMUNITY DID YOU TALK TO BEFORE DECIDING TO PUT ON YOUR GRAFF LETTER SEMINAR????

The Savager, Typos RA, Meres manager of 5 ptz. in Queens, members pf my crew, Ouija, and much more. All reputable heads, I assure you. I wanted to get opinions on what was valid and applicable to tattooing. And considering tattooing has given SO much to graffiti artists, I figured I'd offer some knowledge back to that community. Everyone I asked thought it was a great idea.

I'm also fed up with bad graffiti tattos, and anyone whose worked in a shop for any given amount of time has gotten a request for a graffiti piece. I think even more now so since it's become so prevalent in modern media and culture. I think giving tattooers a rough idea of the format of my letters can hopefully shine a fresh new light on them, as most tattooers have had no experience in letter structure. And for all I know, I may be inspired by one of those artists who later changes those letters into something fresh and new. Remember, I'm teaching letter theory, not how to get started in graffiti. If you want to do that, do it the old fashioned way;

Join a grafffiti crew and start crushing.

AD

I for one are happy that Adrian is doing this (then again I dont write, so maybe it doesn matter). But I agree that so many graffiti tattoos that I see arent what I see on walls. If people can do stuff in tattoos that is much like Alex Greys work, then it wont be impossible to do same kinda tattoos as the art on walls. I have seen some stuff that Pace Excel and Grime have done, and they look great. But not most of the work, and thats how it shouldnt be. because tattoos are for ever. And I love both tattoos and graffiti art, so it husrt me to see mediocre "graffiti" tattoos. I think its great that Adrian is doing this. I think both art forms will benefit from it.

"golf claps"

ps. Adrian, what do you write?

My graffiti name starts with an S and ends with a consanant, with a few vowels here and there. I'm updating my OG art gallery soon, so it'll be pretty obvious and my anonimity will be gone forever.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

Definately dope. Most graf tats I see out there...are just straight up wack. Just my opinion though...

I think this seminar is a great idea. I believe that lettering in general can be one of the more difficult elements of tattoo to master. I also have known you personally since you began tattooing, and have spoke with you on many occasions. I respect, and admire you work on both the street, and the flesh. I myself have been writing, and tattooing for well over ten years. As curious as I am to attend your seminar I am concerned that for me personally this may just be a re-hash of information that I am already aware of. Do you think that your seminar will cover anything beneficial to a head that's already deeply rooted in graff & tattoo? I also hope that you encourage non- graffitti heads to create their own unique hand styles by applying the fundementals of calligraphy, and repetition as opposed to just biting from what's already out there. At any rate I hope to see you at Hell city. Peace.

Thanks, Glyph. I totally know what you mean about rehashing information, and I can't say 100% whether or not you know the information of if it will be beneficial as a seasoned writer. I do know, however, that these same principles I'm teaching has helped improve the graf of many a crew partner, and I have seen signifigant improvements very rapidly, including flow, letter weight. proportions, amongst other things.

Agian, these improvements were based off MY personal theories, but they have since took and made those techs their own. This is a key part of style letter developement, making it your own. We have to take into consideration that many of the students from this class will be inexperienced, so we probably will see a few bites and knckoffs. Thats just the nature of the beast. Graffiti writers bite everyday. I will defineately stress the importance of being original, especially with graff letters. The point is to help letters form as an art, progress. I want to see what tattooers are going to do with this knowledge. When done right, the result of mixing good graffiti and tattooing has an unmatchable design quality about it. A friend of mine has 2 ALL BLACK graffiti/traditional sleeves by Mike Giant. Possibly the best graffiti tattooing Iv'e ever seen. Wasnt too graff, wasnt too tattoo. Perfect blend. Now, his tattoo designs apear more and more in his graffiti. Proggression rocks. Mike is a tattooer who started by first doing graffiti,

Whos done it the opposite way? No one that I know. I may be playing Devil's advocate... But I wanna see some new shit pop off! Lets see what tattooing will do for graffiti, and vice versa!

You are right about Giant being dope as hell! This here is a perfect example how tattoos can be seen on graffiti. At least in my eyes



And relating to graffiti and tattoos, I just have finished two long and really good (I think they are my best) interviews for tattooNOW with Giant and Jesse Smith (Yuse One) in which both we talk a lot about graffiti too. I will post the link on the "TattooNOW Interview Series" topic when they are up on the site :)

I thought this could be cool and educational too. So here are some graffiti letter tattoos that I think are good. Others can also comment what they think about them :)


By Cleen Rock One








(I aint no expert, but took this in too because its similar to the old cholo lettering stuff)




By Mike Giant




By Pashe




By Jher (I am personally little on the fence about this one. Dont know if I like it or not. Same with the one on the above)


By Zam


I hope you guys like :) I couldnt get any pics, but Bern does REALLY cool stuff. And Timmi Mensah too.

The blue one with red highlights (under Mikes name) is also by Giant and not by Pashe! Sorry :)

Is it possible to mass teach style? Can it be prepackaged and imitated? Yeah. Look at Urban Outfitters. They rehash trends that kids in the city were wearing a year earlier on their own accord.

Growing up writting was about personal style. Yes, first and foremost it's about getting up, getting fame, but it didn't really matter all that much if your handstyles were weak or your throw ups were hurting. When I was an 8th grader I started writting Poet on girl's trapper keepers and eventually older writters saw it and told me if I didn't stop I would get my hands broken. Soon those same writers, specially Teel from H20, MUL would take me under his wing. I developed my own style, paid my dues..etc.

I think there's a large difference between art house graff writers who find themselves in the Banksy vain of stencil bombing or down bad Daim impressions thinking oddly rendered 3D letters are "complex" and the vain of Poem, Hex, all the MSK writers. I don't think any writer who came from the later school would would ever consider teaching a class on "how to do letters" because there's not one letter style or a way you can mass teach an effective way to develope an individual style of writting. At my old shop the owner had asked Reso TCK to do a sheet of flash graff letters and Reso pretty much said why would he want his personal style on people he didn't know? Or used by tattoo artists who didn't develope those letters? Yes, tattoo artists render flash on a daily basis that they didn't come up with. But from the writters prespective it's not the same thing.

I've had to stencil out some of those Flash graff sheets before during my first apprenticeship. The Mr. Wigggles one specifically. They look horrible..mainly because real piece, real letter styles..the letters flow around each other. There's no analytical aproach to lettering because letters don't move in a static fashion and each style is specific to the artist doing them. Personally coming from the graff side of things I'm not looking forward to seeing a bunch of tattoo artists with no history trying to pull off letters. Yes, the stuff coming out now is pretty horrible...but that's on the artist. It's also on the client to seek out the artist who has the ability to do letters as they would seek out a Niko/Joshua Carlton for a portrait, Mr. Cartoon for black and grey L.A. shit, Paul Booth for dark shit.

I'm glad you're attempting to school the community. But to attempt to mass teach lettering I don't know how I feel about. Prehaps it's a little elitest..but graffiti is at it's core an everyday man's elitest art.

I dont think that Adrian was talking about mass production. As he said

This is a key part of style letter developement, making it your own. We have to take into consideration that many of the students from this class will be inexperienced, so we probably will see a few bites and knckoffs. Thats just the nature of the beast. Graffiti writers bite everyday. I will defineately stress the importance of being original, especially with graff letters. The point is to help letters form as an art, progress. I want to see what tattooers are going to do with this knowledge. When done right, the result of mixing good graffiti and tattooing has an unmatchable design quality about it.

Tattoo art has been about people. Its a folk art, as is graffiti. I dont see these two (or any art style for that matter) as something that should elitist. Of course there are some quidelines to them. You cant say that you are a graffiti artist if you dont know some basic fundamentals. Same with tattoos.

So I think the point is to try to see graffiti as a art form and not some VIP club. I mean, graffiti is everywhere. If graffiti artists use the city as there canvas, how can they say that the people who live in that city cant be exited about it and they cant have similar stuff on there skins?

And big part is also that if tattoo artists are going to have to do it, at least try to do it a little bit better.

But I do see what Manos is trying to say.

Tattoo culture in western society is very money oriented, at least that is what has started it. And it really wasnt that much about just making great art, but tattooing sailors like they came from a conveyer belt. Who tattooed the most had more clients. And like in everything that has something to do with capitalism, there is allways the danger of things loosing there magic and meaning. So I understand why Manos feels this way. He/she is propably scared that something that dear to him would be convorted to something that safe and banal.

But this would be more of a concern if Adrian would be doing something that makes the art loose its soul. Mass productiing this like it was said before. Then it would be like the flash days and conveyr belts. But since he aproaches this from a art side of things, I am positive that he wont let money take the dominating position. But it will be the growth and betterment of TATTOO ART, not FLASH art.

And graffiti will allways stay on the streets and walls. So if you take THAT aspect out of it, then that would be a concern.


ps. I dont mean that flash isnt art.

More pics :)


By Paco Excel




(Not maybe letters, but still in same category)


By Adrian Lee




By Timmi Mensah


This was tattooed by Chucho, sketch by Kuaze

By Echo




By Seen

Let me first say I respect Adrian's attempts here. It's great that a talented tattoo artist is tackling this, and a discussion like the one we're having is taking place. It's important in all genres of art to have a critical dialogue to grow the art.

Now this next part may be dangerous waters to tread; to me, graffitti is an elitest art. It's not elitest in the way that we ascociate in the standard art community of champagne flutes and galleries filled with trust fund hipsters, I would say it's a more genuine and as I said blue collar elitism. Anyone can get respect if they're up enough. It doesn't matter if you're a rich indy rock white kid or a gay phillipino writer (like my boy Egor from X-Men)...if you're up, and you're rocking with style, you're gonna get your dues. This doesn't imply that graffitti culture is static and all is needed for fame is a bunch of throw ups and one liners (though...truth be told a sick handstyle wins over any wanna be Daim piece). I think MSK/AWR showed the Graff world in the 90s along with ASC and SB you can rock acryclic paint along with spay paint on the wall and it still be fresh.

The issue I have here is that 90 percent of graff writers don't have dope letters...most don't even have dope hand styles. To understand "letters" you first have to understand the rhythym of handstyles...which I will say ussually fall into 2 catagories...New York which has much more stylized handstyles with fatter one liners and California which has a more cursive style (of course that's not everyone in Cali....Hex and a lot of people had more of a NY style). Personally I practice my tags more then anything.

Is it expecting too much to think that someone wanting to tattoo graff style letters understand and work on their handstyles first and then move up to "pieces". Personally I'd say "no". In the era of the 80s and early 90s before the deluge of art school graff writers you'd be a toy if you couldn't pull a dope one liner. It's the foundation. You look at a lot of the new writers and they do a lot of abstract images in their pieces to sugarcoat the fact that they don't have that foundation.

I'm really glad you posted that Chucho piece Kauze did the letters for. Everyone in Chucho's crew understands letters, and Chucho himself is a sick ass graff writer and artist. IT kind of goes to show that even Chucho rocked someone elses letters because the particular piece called for it. Even in graff most people either are letter or character people. There's a few people who can acomplish both well like Mode 2, or Hex, Solo from ASC. Personally I'm not a fan of those Cleen Rock letters that were posted. To me they look toyish. But Cleen has amazing character work, I'm personally a fan of his style..but for letters...eeeehh.

And wow...those Daim style pieces in the beggining you posted are sick, very, very sick.

Good thing that people post in this :) Lets start the commenting on the bottom.

Could these two comments be connected?

It's important in all genres of art to have a critical dialogue to grow the art.

&

Personally I'm not a fan of those Cleen Rock letters that were posted. To me they look toyish. But Cleen has amazing character work, I'm personally a fan of his style..but for letters...eeeehh.

First of all im not even going to act like I KNOW something about graffiti, and particulary letters, but I will still try to raise some conversation. To me those two comments could be related. if we look at the placement of the tattoo, its a small area and a tight spot. Maybe the client just wanted something in there. So could it be possible that Cleen did as you say on the first sentence that I quoted? That he tried to make it work in TATTOO world, and not as much as think of what could look dope just as letters? I dont know that much what makes a good letter style, but I would like to hear what you think of that idea.

Or in another words. Is that picture that I posted a bad TATTOO?

And to realating to this. If someone tattoos a graffiti letter tattoo, will it have to be a dope letter first, until it can become a dope tattoo? This could be relating to the elitist aspect.

its so unique this tattoo thing. If you have a art reprodcution tattoo, then its pretty easy to say if its good or not, but when we go to other art styles in which originality is the key, it becomes much harder to define whats good. But should the graffiti and how good is it as a art, be only judged by artists who do it?`That doesnt happen in other art forms.

I know for working in a museum for some time, that every average joe can say what they like about a painting and nobody will question them. Not even the artists (at least hardly ever they do) Because everyone sees art differently But what if there would be graffiti art displayed? And someone would say about a Pose piece that "this is really nice. Look at how it flows"

*Badang" (A writer appears)

WTF are you talking about!! Thats whack!!

:D ;)

You know what I am saying.

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