First SHOK-1 Spraypainting (1985)
April 9th, 2009Although I started in the summer of 1984, all the streets I had done up until this point were with marker pens. Apart from a ton of ugly tags everywhere, I actually used to go out and do big pieces at night fully filled in with marker pen! Dry old Berol Magnum 800’s too with no ink flow at all. It would take forever.
This was the first time I got my hands on spraypaint. My friend got the cans so we ended up doing his design rather than mine after some arguing. It says “Crime”, painted in generic car paints from Halfords.
We started around 1am in the morning if I remember correctly, in the underpass of a park where we used to hang out causing trouble and generally having fun. There was some stress towards the end with a do-gooder who had to be warned off but in general it went well for a first ever attempt.
Although it looks like absolute dogshit now of course, I can’t even begin to explain the absolute excitement I felt at seeing this the next morning. It looked like it was hanging in mid air in front of the wall like a cartoon that had come to life, a filthy illusion. I didn’t own a camera for quite a while but someone took this picture for me.
It was the beginning of a long journey. Here I am at the time of writing – click to view
