Today was my first attempt at graffiti drawing and lettering. Graffiti is one of the things I want to learn, not because I want to deface public property, but because I’d never done it before and I thought it would be interesting to pursue; it is.

Man, I had no idea of the history of graffiti! It’s so cool and there’s so much information on it. Graffiti Diplomacy and Graffiti Knowhow were really good websites. The first one with lots of practical lessons and the second with lot of info about the culture of being a graffiti artist. I totally love it when I get to learn something absolutely brand new. It feels like I’ve discovered buried treasure. For example, I learnt about mops, which are a certain type of pen/marker used by graffiti artists. That’s a much more exciting use of the word usually preserved for describing a boring household item that is used to drag a ratty wet end across a dirty floor. By the way – I hate mopping. It makes me sad.

I spent around three hours today researching and giving actual graffiti a go. I would like to learn how to do Wildstyle, which is a kind of font. This is what I came up with today, which I did freehand, following the methods on the websites I mentioned:

I think I did better at this than I did with knife throwing. This probably comes down to graffiti being a form of writing, which I am quite familiar with having been able to write since I was a little kid. Plus, I’ve kept at writing,whereas with the knives, the only thing I’ve ever thrown at a target is a few darts. I gave up on that when I was a kid after being yelled at endlessly by an impatient father who expected me to be an expert the first time I tried something.There’s a hilarious video here of an angry, impatient dad. Mine was about this level, minus the eff word plus religious blasphemy.

I felt like I had level of pre-existing mastery over the graffiti, which was absent during the knife throwing. The knife throwing took more brain power and a level of perseverance that the graffiti was void of, and as a result I was able to enjoy the graffiti more. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on the knives, just that I suck more at them than I do at the graffiti and that’s ok, because that’s what beginners do; they suck at stuff.

Imagine how much room you’ve got to grow