Yesterday, I stumbled upon some photos I took while in Los Angeles. I spent ten days there checking out the sites and sounds but mainly to seek out the cool graffiti that proliferates the back alleys and abandoned train stations across the city.

I really appreciate the boldness of the colors and the amazingly creative type treatments these artists use when creating their pieces. If you kick around this stuff long enough, you can start to see the stylistic tendencies of each artist emerge, allowing you to immediately identify their work.

So, here’s a brief collection of some international graffiti artists that have work in L.A. and some unnamed local talent that may not be household names but, in my opinion, deserve props.

Daim is a graffiti artist/Graphic Designer from from Lueneburg (near Hamburg / Germany). He’s easily one of the most talented urban artists to grab a paint can. What else can I say about his work…the color, the 3-D effect, the type treatment, it’s all there for the taking. Beautifully crafted, meticulous art.

If you want to see more of Daim’s work, check out his website here.

This wall was inspired in opposition to Proposition 21, the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act. It was a ballot initiative that, when passed, sent California’s youthful offenders from the juvenile system to the punishment-oriented adult-justice system.

Its impact is especially sharp in Los Angeles County, source of nearly a third of the state’s juvenile offenders.

SEAK has a knack for creating these visually riveting biomorphic compositions based on space, aliens and technology themes. Super creative stuff.

I couldn’t dig up much information on his career. He trashed his website in 2008 but through the genius of the Way Back Machine I was able to dig up his last viewable version here.

These are self-prescribed (and rather humorous) acronyms for SEAK’s name:

Superficial Exposure Alarms Kindergarten
Self Educated Autistic Knave
Surprisingly Easy Access to Knowledge
Surely Equals Any Kind
Style Evolution At Knifepoint

I shot these at an abandoned train station in East L.A.. I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous being there, but it was worth it to see some cool old-school graffiti.

The exterior walls of this station had been sprayed time and time again for decades. Thinking that the paint layers would probably show like rings in a tree when it’s cut, I took my knife and sliced down to the original wall. I counted 50 layers of visible paint.