32- Midg outline, 1982.

Midg, my homey, aka Lil Bandit (LB 1). Wonder where in the world he is today, Newavers till the end. I wanted to rock an outline for his name, wild style connected to the LB1, thick straight down 3D with a semi stippled one directional set of stripes in it. I remember having a long conversation with Iz The Wiz (RIP) about this particular outline so now it reminds me more of him than of Midg. I remember how he liked that all the hook ups and extras were able to be followed and didnt just disappear. I always had that sense that everything had a reasonable beginning and end, i had seen many pieces in my day that lines would come from out of nowhere and end sometimes behind letters, not my style. (Remember, i did say within reason, I am guilty of this offense on occasion as well).

Still a fun and tight outline from way back when!

35- Ale, 1982

Here's a little quickee for a slow sunny Monday morning. This particular outline came very early in my career, before the bubble gum pieces. Even before my style began developing itself. You can see that as i was combining every and any element i can get my hands on, straight and geometrics with curvy and swoopy arrows and stems, you can definitely say I wasn't afraid to throw down the kitchen sink. That lack of fear of trying anything is an important, maybe the most, element to where my style is today. If there is any lesson I can share with anyone it's be fearless, try anything and after much practice your own style will begin to set you apart from your peers. This outline isn't great by any standards but at the time for me was very experimental and I have always been experimental. Pushing the envelope of style is the core of graffiti, if you're not pushing youre just another of many faces in the crowd.

32-34- The Bubble Gums PT. 1, 1982-1983.

I remember a period at Art and Design when food related names were the craze and i was not going to let any craze that involved piecing new names pass me by. I went through several, some silly (Nosh comes to mind) and some I liked the letters (there really wasn't any reason behind Ale) but my favorite for sure was Bubble Gum. I had such fun with these letters. You couldn't go wrong with this combination of letters. Longer names are usually problematic for graffiti artists, they add complexity and take more time but sometimes the complexity is the challenge.

Bubble Gum, 3 "Bs" and an "L" and "E" The style options were endless. The "U" was always a letter that can morph into any style I am using so all together it was almost perfect, I never pieced any of these outlines but i had a great time drawing them.
So here they are starting with the simplest (above). I used a red Pilot Pen to outline and a black Pilot (razor points) for the shadow cutting around the red. Since the black would completely go over the red i had to cut around to get the feeling that the red was opaque, which it wasn't. A few black chip off the shadow to the right to give the piece some weight and I know there technically should be a source for the shadow to drop from, but graffiti should rarely be technical, unless you are German, Those cats are way too technical for me!
I don't have a title for this one, I remember wanting to piece something colorful and fun. I think the 2 arrows, one up, one down bring this piece at least one step away from a simple outline. The mini Bubble piece running down the "U" adds some complexity and style too and adds some coolness (as far as colors) into the predominantly warm colors. The hot pink 3D has shading coming from the rear and cross intersecting that are random swirly black stripes. Thick to thin as they move towards the rear. Finishing the piece is an abstract jagged pink thick and thin set of lines in the fill.

 

Now we get to the more complex outlines, Green Bubble. The marker of choice for blackbook piecing was almost always an alcohol based transparent ink marker, there are thousands on the market now but back then there were maybe only 1000 and when new colors were released and I got my hands on some it was like every day was Saturday! The pastel shades allowed me to use other colors aside from black to outline(and i had a huge set of water based colorful Marvy pens waiting to play!). The alcohol markers blended easily and had a confident calmness about them. Subtle styles. The Marvy pens, being water based would not pick up nor bleed into the alcohol markers, that's why I never outlined and filled in with the same based makers, you would get a blurry mess.

The Bubble outline here I would call a semi wild style mostly because I could always get wilder which doesn't usually mean better. I love the hook ups here especially at the 2 Bs and L part. Me E floated too far from the piece so I had to add some chips on it's top left to compensate the empty space it left, I would correct that mistake if I ever pieced or painted this. Again the lack of tags suggests my moving away from tagging and into the piecing realm. The overall of the piece is stiff and angular with few curves, that was completely intentional. Aside from the space behind the E i really love this piece.

31- Party Blue Paze, 1982.

We were painting R trains in the midtown layups way back when, me, Size, Eros and Lawe. I loved those tunnels, they were warm, easy to get to and for the most part peaceful, never saw a cop there and painted most of my BMT/IND trains there. One drawback was there was little to no lighting in certain areas. One night Sizer had to piece in total darkness, when we saw the pieces running we cracked up that his outline was about 4 inches off the piece, like a misprint. That inspired this piece, if you follow the blues in this you will see that they align with the black drop shadow, as if the piece were transparent, the dark blue marker was bleeding a lot on me because it was new and the actual outline is still a little funky but starts to show where I was going with my style, thank goodness I got better because the concepts are always there.
Another popular myth is that graffiti and hip hop are synonymous, its not always true, I am a fan of hip hop but was always more influenced by the classic rock bands so you might see many references to popular rock songs in my blackbook. Rock and Roll!

30- Erni, Breakaway Letters, 1983.

After a long delay, I am ready to get back to blackbook descriptions, I needed to take some time to complete my new website, www.evlworld.com which is up now and any comments from my friends are welcome and appreciated. Its my first time making an online store.
Anyway, I thought I would describe this piece since it’s the inspiration to one of my top 2 bottoms I did with Midg back in the day, the concept was simple, everyone had variations of “chips” or little pieces that ”break” off your letters usually used to fill empty space and keep the piece balanced. I decided to separate them from the piece by using a 3D that changed direction, that’s why I used a simple outline for the Erni piece so you can get a stronger effect from the different 3Ds. Also the contrasting colors helped a lot in that effect as well.

29-Tracey, 1983

Out of all the graffiti names I ever did for any girl, this one is special since Tracey was my real first girlfriend, everyone say “awwwwwww” together now!

At this point I was just beginning to experiment with fine point Marvy Markers, since they were water based and design markers were alcohol based there was no chance of colors bleeding into each other although to accomplish this yellow outline I did have to go around the lighter colors. This took a lot longer than traditional blackbook pieces but the outcome was worth it and my style on the path to unique-ness.

By the time I got to this piece I was growing tired of the same black or dark outline that was prevalent in I would guess about 90% of everyones blackbook pieces, this was yet another of what was to be many departures from graffiti I would take.

28- Erni Nancy, 1983

I remember when the movie Pink Floyd came out, I grew up in the Hip Hop world so I still hadn’t fully grasped the concept of Pink Floyd and I never understood the film, it was the sickest thing I had seen at that point. One thing I got for sure was the power and raw emotion of the animation, the graphics which burned their images in my mind still to this day. I bought the double album, studied all the lyrics, I was hooked but enough about Pink Floyd. The font that was used on that album was the first time I saw the solid black scratchy drippy style and I loved it, it inspired this whole car, I knew I wanted to do a checkerboard background, don’t even ask how I knew how to plot it, there was no thought behind it except this will work and luckily it did, special thanks to the MTA for first priming the car white for us which saved on time and paint, oh how backwards 

the MTA was back then, surely if they weren't run so poorly graffiti would never have grown to the worldwide phenom it is today!

The blackbook piece however is a direct descendant of those 
Pink Floyd letters, what I added over the solid black strokes was another set of white letters over, it looks like a fill in but its really not. Its 2 outlines then a really thick 3G shaded sparsely with red color pencil, even the ink spots I gave a 3D too, the effect  was totally experi-mental as I didn’t have any real direction from the start, just a feeling and ended with a really mean and aggressive outline, still truly one of my favorites.