In his long career Hope was rarely doing characters and yet he started his graffiti activities with them. Depending on the complexity of the character, they can be a very good way to learn about the quality of the line and how to take a space.

This very simple but memorable character Hope did in 2002, at the time when he was already serious about graffiti writing. He started writing in 1999 and even though he started with characters he realized that they are usually too small compared to the letter he and the others were using, so he just switched to the letters. Still, he would from time to time use characters as the additions to the pieces, so this small unattached character is very unusual for him. On the other hand this drawing has all characteristics of the early New Belgrade’s graffiti style. It has the making of a throw up that was enhanced with the good technique and more colors. At the time when the first graffiti writers in New Belgrade started doing graffiti they had a vision of making modernist buildings and the brutalist architecture more palatable for all residents of New Belgrade. This simplicity and readability were a key to their success because the locals could read it and understand it, which are prerequisites of appreciation.

Hence this little bear character looks like a silver piece, simple structure, white fill in, dark outline and second outline to fit it in the surrounding. If we follow his later stylistic development we will see that after this period he was working towards complexity but then switched back to the principles of graffiti writing that we just discussed.