Sriracha Marker in OpenFrameworks

One of my favorite things to do was “hoodratthingswithfriends” and still is. When I first got into graffiti I had thought that tagging was pure childish vandalism but as I went out more and more I began to see a beauty in the handstyles of all the other writers in the community each person had very different ways of representing an “S” in the tag and so on. All the different techniques for tags and each person having a very particular motion and beauty to his or her tag. Not only did each person have very unique way of “getting up” but it seemed that they all had very unique motives for doing graffiti in the first place. As graffiti,  it seemed to me, became an extension of the advertising arm; even graffiti artists themselves took to creating street art to promote their upcoming solo show at X gallery in Chelsea I started to appreciate more this chicken scratch on the walls.  To most people I pointed it out the tags to, it was illegible, but for those familiar with particular handstyles and other subtleties of this artform, certain ones were immediately recognizable whether the individual letters could be deciphered or not.  I began to become really interested the  pichação in particular because of their unity amongst all pichadores. In the states it was common to have rival graf crews crossed out tags with derogatory statements like “toy” aimed at less skilled writers, the writers of Sao Paolo have an unwritten code of respect for other pichadores rarely would one see this type of thing  happen. The pichadores respected one another in their practice and felt the way to prove oneself was to go above(height) from the rest. Sometime from scaling very tall skyscrapers or sometimes with the help of the brothers and sisters.

This particular interest in the picadors of sao pualo has influence my wn personal handstyle, and the always prevalent DIY aesthetics of graffiti culture had brought me to make many different kinds of DIY markers over the years. I experiments with steel tip, shoe polish mops and many others, but my favorite was this siracha marker, which combined both my love of the spicy hot sauce flavors of the orient, as well as my love for dirty raw drippy graffiti tags.

Below are the general ingredients although I tended to have a very unscientific mixture changing depending on how drippy I wanted the marker.

Ingredients include: Paint thinner(for fast drying and thinner drips), fish oil(creates a shimmer to the inks), oil based metal enamel(heavduty industrial paint), and for me reason key to all good markers art DOT3 break fluid(creates a ghosting effect if it gets buffed).

When I began to experiment in coding drawing tools using OpenFrameworks, I decided this would keep me grounded and feeling close to home. So here is a tag of mine using the track pad(much less control than full arm motions I like with tagging) but still fun.

you can download the code for this Digital Sriracha marker at my GITHUB