Managed to finally get some good flickage…

1. La roux - Quicksand (Boy 8 Bit Mix)

This is a tingler!

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2. Wiley - Never Be Your (Herve Remix)

Am i gunna get slated for this? i don’t care

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3. Boy 8 bit - Baltic Pine

Another housey one. Boy 8 bit on a nice calypso vibe.

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(All links taken from other already existing sources on the internet)

Drawing for Get Sketchy

Skating seems to have ridiculously good cinematography these days (Films like ‘yeah right’ and ‘Photosynthesis’ also blew mind a few years a go).

This video is so well done, albeit a little bit cringey on account of the staged fight scenes(In parts). It doesn’t seem to be in the ‘true essence of skateboarding’ for me, but what the fuck do i know? These kids can SHRED THE GNAR!

Nike SB - Debacle from Hardskate on Vimeo.

Stay locked….

I got a copy the other day of the Vandal Squad book by Joseph Rivera. If you dont know the author was part of New Yorks vandal squad from 1984-2004.

I dont really read but i havent been able to put the book down!   Its the only graffiti book ever to be written from the other side…..

Check the letter written to him from Cope 2 that is printed on the back of the book…….

V

The first of our exclusive interview series that we are launching here on REPLDN is with PREF from ID crew based in north wheezy, London. He is a writer we have had our eye on for a while and isn’t shook to try new things, this will give you an in sight to what tip hes on and some unseen flicks…… Enjoy

How long have you been writing?

I’ve still got some of my first outlines from 1993. I did my first proper dub and piece in 96 but I didn’t start painting real productions until around 2000.

What made you want to start spraying?

I bought a copy of Spraycan Art at a local car boot sale for 50p when I was 13. I don’t really have any memories of graffiti before that book but I was pretty hooked from the moment I opened it. There was a real mystery to the whole scene back then, there was no internet and graffiti magazines and videos were pretty rare (blah blah) so it was like a window into a new world and it was only in that book that I was also able to get a first glimpse into the culture; photos of writers and their bedrooms, black book sessions, paint stashes, crew shots etc, and they were all just as important to me as the pictures of the pieces themselves when it came to figuring the whole thing out and then being inspired to try myself.

Your style has changed drastically through your graffiti career, can you talk a bit about the development, influence and transition of style?

I think it’s fundamental as any kind of artist to always be growing and trying new things, thinking about what it is that your doing and why you do it etc etc. I’ve tried to paint a few different style over the years, some of them were OK, some were not so successful, it’s always been more important to me to try something new.

In the beginning I painted a more traditional style but I ended up getting a bit bored. I started to think that a lot of graffiti was just a bad pastiche of things and ideas for letters which had already been done better decades before. In a way I was just painting an ideal of what I thought graffiti was supposed to be, and I thought that there were loads of other people who were all doing the same. Outside of graffiti I was at art school studying design where it was all about ideas and concepts and new ways of thinking about things. Work without a concept in that world is nothing, so after a while I couldn’t help but start to want to approach my painting in the same way.

I’ve always been inspired by writers who are doing something different but still paint something that looks like graffiti. The movement is only 30- 40 years old which is nothing compared to other art forms, I never believed that graffiti had reached its creative peak in the first 20 years that it had been around, today there are loads of people who are being really original and creative but are still painting ‘graffiti’ and that’s the skill I think. This isn’t a street art/graffiti thing, just that graffiti for me means; letters, fill, outline, 3-D/dropshadow, highlights, a border and a cloud. The list can vary, but essentially that’s it. Through all of the different styles that I’ve tried I have always used that as the one consistent element. Of course rules are always made to be broken, but to compare it to a cliche it’s a bit like if you want to think outside the box, first you need a box to think outside of and I think that that’s what these are. They have defined graffiti letters in history but there is also still so much scope to do more with them in the future.

My different styles have just come out of thinking about different ways to approach things. Starting again in a way but most importantly not being precious about anything I came up with that I liked. Once I got bored or felt like I had hit a bit of a dead end with new ideas for it I would just start thinking and drawing again. I always thought that I wouldn’t be painting what I paint now if I hadn’t moved away from what I was painting before, so bin it. Except with each step the idea is to try to get ‘better’. It feels a bit like quest for the perfect style, quite often I go back and try old ideas that I liked mixed in with new ones but generally it’s just about moving forward. I’m excited to think about what everyone will be painting in ten years from now.

You are part of London’s ID crew. If so, how has this changed your motivation and approach to painting?

We’re a bunch of idiots, but we are all talented in different ways. We all have different styles and our differences are celebrated so if you want to try something new everyone is encouraging and there’s no real pressure to conform to any kind of crew style. It makes painting together a lot of fun.

What are your thoughts on the London scene right now?

I will always love and hate the London scene. Some of my favorite writers are from London and its divided into so many different styles and attitudes. It’s a real spectrum. We’ve got a vast transport network and loads of walls to paint which means that you could get up to pretty much anything. I love that there’s still a strong illegal scene, but there’s a lot of shit and everything gets dogged all the time. People don’t get on with each other as much as they should and too many kids get the wrong graff role models I think.

Moving away from London, do you have any personal favorite scenes outside of the UK?

Its only in the last few years that I have really been able to get to know other scenes and that’s mainly through the web. I’ve only done a small amount painting abroad so I don’t have that much first hand experience but I liked LA, nice big walls and amazing weather. There are small places in holland I went to with more legal walls than we have in London but I saw more graffiti in the south of France than anywhere else that I’ve been to, and a lot of it’s made up of countryside, it’s crazy. I think its nice that different places offer different things.

Your style is stepping away from traditional letters, how do you feel about the direction graffiti in general is going at the moment?

I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff that’s out there. A lot if it’s just generic and boring, but there are some writers who are really pushing things. I’ve only recently started looking at Streetfiles, I hardly recognise any names on there but I’m constantly surprised by the level of quality that’s coming out of some unsuspecting places. In my opinion the more good graffiti writers we have in the world the more pressure there is to be creative and do something different if you want to stand out and be remembered. That can only be a good thing.

We see you have had a solo show last year how did you find the whole experience? Do you plan to have anymore exhibits in the near future?

I was given the opportunity to have a solo show even though I don’t make paintings, I’m not a fine artist, and I’m not really interested in doing any kind of graff or spray paint on canvas. I work as a graphic designer so It was fun just to treat it like a brief and try to make something in a different way that I would like to hang on my wall. It went well, but the gallery and collective didn’t survive and that put an end to my antics as an ‘artist’. I would be interested in showing again in the future maybe, I think its a great challenge as a graffiti artist to make interesting new work for the gallery without falling into cliche territory.

How do you feel about the conflict between street artists and graffiti writers?

Street art and graffiti are completely different things they just have the same attitude and they’re both in the street. Graffiti for me is about something you learn slowly that is a particular skill, not only do you need to learn how to use spray paint and be able to draw letters in a particular way but there’s also a whole culture attached. Street art is just much more of a free for all. What ever you say goes, much more like a gallery in the street except mostly without the genius. It’s great when it goes well, there are some really smart thinkers doing cool stuff, some of its really inventive and inspiring, but when it goes bad, there’s no stopping them either. In my opinion anyone could decide to be a good street artist tomorrow. They could find some cool images on the internet print a poster or laser cut a stencil and go and put them up all night long. If that same person wanted to be a good graffiti writer tomorrow it would be impossible. I’m not talking about getting up, that’s different. You can get up and be shit and get respect but it takes much longer to learn how to be able to paint a really good piece.

It’s a wrap, thanks for the words, is there anything else you would like to add?

Big up RT crew and the ID family. Oh yeah and there are some photos I got together below. I tried to pick one piece from every style that I’ve tried that I liked since 2001.