Graffiti is all over the streets, schools and even on the train that passes through the intersection where you’re waiting.

It’s a form of vandalism, but it is widely debated if it’s an art form.

However, some graffiti can take a person on a different path into becoming an aspiring artist.

Two Cerritos College students, Sergio De Anda, undecided major, and fine arts major, who would like to be referred to as Eds1, have experienced separate ways of how graffiti impacted them as young adults.

Sergio

At the age of 11, De Anda would hang out on the streets minding his own business until one day he found out that his older brother was doing graffiti.

It intrigued De Anda to know that his brother was into something that was unpredictable and suddenly was sucked into the world of graffiti.

“I started my own crew when I went to my middle school and just kept evolving, getting crazier and tagging a lot more,” De Anda recalls.

Before the age of 18, De Anda had several encounters with the law by getting caught vandalizing property, but was never tried or charged when the case was overdrawn.

De Anda was 19 and found himself in custody and charged with an account of $50,000 of property damage, due to his graffiti.

Fighting the charges he managed to not receive a felony for his defacement of public property, nonetheless, he did get three years of probation.

De Anda came to the realization when he got off probation that street graffiti wasn’t doing much for him as a career.

“I kind of felt comfortable leaving. It didn’t matter because, people I looked up to, I got to paint with and noticed that it wasn’t paying,” he said.

Eds1

Arriving on the graffiti scene at a different time, Eds1, became part of the action at the age of 16 with a friend, who not only shared the passion for art but influenced him to tag on the walls.

“I remembered one night, when I caught him writing on the wall, I asked what he was doing and he gave me his marker and told me to pick my name,” Eds1 said about his first experience with graffiti writing.

To this day, Eds1 illegally tags on walls, but also takes the chance to paint on legal walls that are lent out for him and his friends.

After high school, Eds1 attended Cerritos College and decided to major in Fine Arts with the goal of becoming an art teacher.

“Graffiti is something that I do on the side, my main focus right now is oil painting. Graffiti is always going to be with me, but oil painting first,” Eds1 said about his development in art.

When they met

In the time where De Anda and Eds1 attended Cerritos they both had enrolled in the same art class with professor Hagop Nargarian.

But it wasn’t until toward the end of the semester when De Anda was finally acquainted with Eds1.

“I got up and looked around at everybody’s painting and soon as I walk up to him he tells me,‘Hey, dog, you write?’ And from there we started choppin’ (talking) it up,” De Anda said about his first encounter with Eds1.

With a year and a half of becoming good friends, De Anda and Eds1 have both bonded from the love of graffiti to the aspirations of mastering oil painting.

They grew to appreciate the artistic talent that grows within their lives.

As friends, they both collaborate on painting sessions by encouraging each other to try different methods that would improve their skills.

What they’re up to now

Graffiti is what brought the two aspiring artists together, but their passion to become mentors one day is what they would both like to achieve.

“I think graffiti definitely taught me colors, but graffiti and oils are different things,” De Anda said referring to how different the styles are for him.

Although, they both are trying to build up their portfolios of oil painting, they admitted to still tagging on the streets of Los Angeles and Cerritos.

“Real graffiti belongs in the streets, not on the canvas,” De Anda said.