A couple of weeks ago i started researching stencil art. I see it allover the place and i have always thought it was cool but wondered how it was done. I found a rough-rugged-raw video over at metacafe titled "Stencil Graffiti Art 101".

I watched it twice and picked up an exacto knife and stencil paper then stole an image of obama and went to work. I found an old can of spray paint and about 10 minutes later i had this puppy sitting in my garage.



Ok.. so its not subway or sidewalk worthy yet but i think my first attempt looks pretty good. I learned a few things this time around that will make try 2 even better. Now if i could only find a time machine and go back to when i was young or dumb enough to try painting this in the subway or on a sidewalk....

That's not bad! Did you ever used to "Silk-Screen" t-hirts or stuff like that?

In highschool :) Print Shop 101. My teacher was amazing. He knew computers had landed and type setting was a thing of the past so he let us dabble with making shirts and team banners instead.

The only part that sucked was the first 2 weeks when we had to organize these damn things...

Wow! That's like from the Dark Ages!!!

My brother and I, in High School were art-school nerds... Our first venture was silk screening T-Shirts of Racing Hydroplanes... we ended up selling hundreds of them in less than a week over on the shores of Lake Washington, in Seattle, where they hold the Gold Cup Races.

That was back when you had to carefully cut out the silk screen transfer stuff by hand (before photographic silk-screening)


...Why in hell we didn't stick with it --- I'll never know! We'd probably be rich nowadays!

We cut out the stencil on this green translucent film. Then we got it wet and attached it to the silk screen.. then tossed some paint in it and used a rubber squeegee to spread the paint across.

If you would have stuck with it you could have been the guy who came up with "have a nice day" from forest gump :).

I have 2 friends who found something they liked to do and stuck with it. One friend started cutting hair when we were 12 years old. Every guy in the neighborhood would pay him 5 bucks for a hair cut. It was early hiphop and the hair cuts looked like this...



Right now that guy has a barber shop right on the corner where we hung out after school every day. He always has a smile on his face.

Another guy started working at a puerto rican resturaunt when he was 15. Now he runs a catering service out of his house and during the week him and his wife prepare fax ordered packaged meals and deliver them to offices down town. They have rediculously flexible schedules and love their job.

Yeah, good examples of guys following their passions.

I wanted to someday become a syndicated cartoonist... but got sucked up in this industry, which isn't a bad thing, really.

When I was married, we had a cleaning lady (2 times a month)... who had just moved up (penniless) from Mexico... This was about fifteen years ago... she built up a client list, has a few crews working for her now, and has managed to own 3 homes - 2 of them she rents out!

Pretty amazing to see that happen.

Yeah the old silk-screening process was a trip.

Turn your love of cartoons into a career designing touchscreens and theater animations "welcome to the smith theater" :)