Oh wow, I love those photos. :-) Time after time it keeps surprising me how much impact graffiti has on people. There are a lot of people I would not guess it from that they are enthusiastic about the art-form and collect/make photos of it. :-) Yeah, that makes me happy.

What doesn't make me happy is the Banksy and streetart stuff among it. To much people there is no difference between graffiti and streetart. In a way they are right, because they are an art on the street (most of the time). I divide it, because streetart is commercial and graffiti a way of life. With streetart it's the trick to get seen by gallery owners for business. It has hardly anything to do with raw unadulterated opinions and smack in the face colours and shapes. And for those who make it: good luck on you! :-)

You can see the distinction between the two very good on graffiti jams. There is a, at the very least friendly, competition going on. Not by the works, but by the comments that go back and forth. :-D

Back to the interesting part. The letters. Opinions aside, a tag is smallest type of piece a grapher makes. As I wrote in an earlier post, that's a daily task from the very start of your career till the very end of it (which never happens, trust me, after 32 years of painting I kinda know :-D). The main complaint of people looking at them is the readability of the tags. Well, in comes the art: take an alphabet, pick your favourite letters in any order you like and give them a good massage. Squeaky here and there, little pinches anywhere. Make a caricature out of them. But do not lose the integrity of the letters. As they are some sort of characters to me, why not give them some attitude. Do you have that in your mind? Now look at one of the pieces and do it reverse engineered. Start massaging them, push back the squeaks and pinches, make that arrow disappear and slowly you decipher the words. :-) That's how I do it. :-)