Influences

There are many street artists that influenced my art work. However, there is one person that has influenced me by his technique and his name is Futura2000. I remember drawing pictures in my sketchbook and trying to emulate his style off my lap top. I was introduced to him by the PS2 video game getting up. He was one of the first artists you meet.  Futura 2000 was one of the pioneers of street art as he was doing it in the 70’s. He used to do graffiti pieces back in the day by spray painting on anything he can see. Presently, he stopped vandalizing subways, walls and does very surreal and abstract pieces on canvases or sculptures. He owns a clothing company Futura Laboratories, which is located in Japan. This clothing caters towards the street fashion style with graffiti designs on the clothing. He also designed a Hennessy bottle in 2012.  His style is very unique, his earlier stuff was straight up graffiti style; bubble letters and the distinct color way. Presently, all you see is abstract pieces, robots/aliens with squiggles around them, weird looking isotopes. Me personally, his earlier stuff was better. Click here to see him in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp7EgQwsfEI

My Relationship with Street Art

In high school I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my spare time. I tried working out every lunch time in the school gym. However, I started to get very bored of it; just the same thing every day. Then I tried playing guitar, which was really fun. But then, I had this strange feeling that I should explore my creativity. I was well acquainted with drawing cartoons, but I felt that I needed to further my drawing and find a style that I can relate with. One day my brother brought home a PS2 video-game called Getting-Up. It was about a graffiti artist trying to get known around the New York area. I watch my brother play and realized that some of the art work that was drawn looked similar to mine. Eventually, I started playing it and tried to copy each of the graffiti drawing styles in my art book. I drew quite a bit of characters. I got confident enough and started showing my drawings to my friends and asking them to critique it. I gained mainly positive reviews from my drawings. Here are some of my drawings from my art book when I was in high school.

PS

These look very bad now that I look at it.