How long have you been painting graffiti?
My Name is CAN2 and I live in Germany. At the tender age of 7 I had a driving need to artistically improve the desk at my school as well as my school books with my own comic style illustrations,
but I did my first piece in 1983.

Before I got into Graffiti I was into B-Boying. I saw some Music Videos on TV where kids were spinning
on their heads and backs so I started dancing too. Graffiti was mostly shown in the backgrounds of the videos.
The day before christmas in 1983 me and two friends went out and I did my first Graffiti
saying “Windmill”. I got the cans from the garage of my father and it was silver with anthracite outlines.
The other two guys were just on the lookout.  

That was the only outdoor action so far but as soon as ZEBSTER showed me his first sketch I started sketching too. We had like a little battle going on, who's gonna do the dopest sketch and who got the best colors and the best fine liner for the white highlights ect...and in 1986 I got my first airbrush so that gave the sketches another quality.
Also in 1986 I got the opportunity through my art teacher to do a big wall at my school.
Since that time I only wanted to paint on walls.  
I had several names in the beginning. RATTY FRESH, RASTEY 177, VIVID LEGS just to name a few.
Later in 1986 I came up with the name COOL CANDY.  
I soon shortened it to CANDY and then CAN. The 2 came because we were living in house No. 2.
After a while I wanted to change my name again but it was too late. I had done a few pieces with it already and people started to recognize me by that name so I kept it.

How do you think the graffiti scene has changed from when you started up til now? 
Of course it has changed a lot and is constantly evolving. Like in real life trends come and go and the community of writers is growing every day. I see it positively. New hardware like cans and caps allow better and cleaner pieces but also rougher outlines, whatever you like. The energy is the same as in the eighties. You think everything has been done before but every day you see slightly new stuff popping up, that’s what I love about the game… 

Do you work from a sketch or just freestyle your pieces? 
I used to do sketches, but since 4-5 years I just freestyle. I feel like I’m more free in my style (like the word says)…hehehe

Before you get started on a piece, do you have the color theme already figured out? 
Sometimes yes sometimes no. But most of the time I just go to my color rack and choose from there.

Where is your inspiration for the colors?
I used to do it differently back in the days compared to today. On the one hand, you couldn’t choose between that many colors and on the other hand, there was the question of money or rather the ability
to get hold of the cans.

When finally Sparvar came on the market, the range of colors increased at least.
Thanks to some jobs we also got some more cans. Most people don't know, but I developed 20 new colors during my time at the Art Agency Oxygen in Frankfurt.
Many of these colors are still a part of the Molotow color range, such as Kiwi, Violet, Apple etc.
Due to the 10 years long sponsoring by Montana, I'm just only spoiled for choices of how my next piece
is gonna look like.
Sometimes, I ask the others to choose the colors and try to go for this challenge.
In general, my basic is a background color. I think about which color could fit or could flow into this background. Actually, I have always been a fan of contrasts regarding outline, keyline and background.

Now, the character design! You probably have one of the most copied style out there today but where is your inspiration. Who do you copy from? Or from what? 
It took many years to develop them.
My early influences on characters were the ones by SKID from Giessen/Germany. Not so many people know him, but he had some of the dopest characters back then. But also drawings by DEVIOUS DOZE, GAWKI and MODE2 had some influence.
Later I was looking more at several cartoon drawers. But I always wanted to keep them in that B-Boy Style as I was a B-Boy myself .
The difference between my characters and those of other writers are to be found in the shading and of course in my distinctive style. I started doing them with that hard-shading technique back in 1992. Nowadays a few writers use that technique too. 

About the copycats: It really depends on the level that they are. If you are a beginner it's absolutely OK to copy Characters just to get a feeling to it. But you should be able to change that style and convert it into your own.
All well known graffiti writers would never copy my characters because everybody knows it's a Can2-Character. But if they still do so there will be a lot of writers out there dissing them for doing it...so I'm very relaxed when people paint characters that look like mine....it will all regulate itself. 
Sometimes it's even funny to see some copied characters painted somewhere, but I think the people recognize it real fast that's not the way to do it...nobody will come far in the graff scene by just copying stuff.

Everyone has their own preferences with caps, which ones do you use?
I use the caps which come with the Montana Gold, they are white/beige. I also love to do outlines with the NY-Fatcap. For bigger spaces I use the white/pink Fatcap, for skinny lines I use the MaClaim Skinny Caps which are white/light grey.

What aerosol brand do you prefer? 
To me the best brand out there is Montana Black.
The new colors are really kicking ass and are covering like I have never seen before.
I can't wait until the new Montana Gold Series comes out also with new colors. 

Thank you for taking time talking to us, any final words? 
I'm still working on my CAN2-Book which will be hopefully launched next year. I have also put a book together that'll be coming out around March 2010, it is a re-make of the JEPSY On The Run Blackbook from 1997 with more background informations and new flix, old and new. 
Besides that I have already a few interesting invitations for 2010 to Manila, LA, Sao Paulo,…and another big project is coming up which I cannot talk about yet…but when it’s done it'll be mind blowing in every aspect. 
In summer 2010 I am planning our first big Stick Up Kids gathering. I hope that all members can make it to Germany. And for sure you can expect more pieces, more characters and more productions with friends all over the world! 
Visit www.cantwo.com or www.stick-up-kids.de for the latest pieces of me and my crew…. 

Peace…CANTWO