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Monday, February 23, 2015

Graffiti Love

Graffiti is not an art that is limited to streets only, with the time it has evolved as the professional art form with some great feedback from the customers. Graffiti is a kind of an art form which is a medium of people to express their feelings and regressions through colors and paints. It could be on walls or any other public property. Some people consider it as the nuisance and a serious form of vandalism. But graffiti leaves a long lasting impact on the mind of the viewer. Graffiti designs are usually very loud, vibrant and engaging. They are meant to depict the mind and thought of the creator.

Graffiti is still considered as the negative part of the creativity as its creators often use public property as the space or canvas for their designs. So, people don't consider it as the respected form of art. But Graffiti is the depiction of the urban youth and their thought process. It displays their discontentment with present social norms and scenario. Graffiti is generally innocuous, lively and prolific paintings that often brightens up walls and buildings. Graffiti has enormous forms and styles but the more popular forms are tagging and Hip Hop.

Graffiti Love

Hip hop graffiti is created with the aerosol spray paints. It comprises of cartoon sketch or complex mix of letters. To design hip hop graffiti is usually a long process as it needs lot of designing and planning.

Tagging graffiti is the most common form to be acquainted. Tagging is the racial form of graffiti and is quite uncomplicated, and not very flashy. Hence it doesn't require much time to create, and does not occupy a lot of space either. It is usually racially motivated or politically inspired.

But with all negativity to its side, Graffiti if directed positively can earn remarkable results for the society. Like if instead of ignoring and opposing the graffiti creators, we try to understand their point of view and try to spread their message to the society in some more creative and non damaging way. You can see many street graffiti designers have turned themselves and evolved themselves as the professional in graffiti art. And people also has broaden up their mind and accepting this form of art by painting on their home walls, vehicles, doors, clothes, hats etc. This show that society is trying to respect and accept this form of art which was once called vandalism.

These days you will find reputed companies endorsing graffiti art form with certified professionals solely devoted to their work. Companies hire individual tattoo artist, product designing people, fashion designing etc. The professionalism and innovativeness is worth applaud and praise. This helped the artist to inculcate positive feedback from the increasing number of customers. They offer people with best of their designs and also ask for their own individual designs in order to paint their homes, offices or clothes etc.

Graffiti Lingo

Graffiti art has been evolving and will continue to flourish, regardless of any acceptance by art institutions or not. As graffiti is slowly embraced by more conventional art venues and publications, it becomes imperative to promote a better understanding of what graffiti is and where it comes from. This is a look inside its underground lingo and its meaning:

All-City: To go all over the city. The effort to cover the most, with the best.

Bite:To copy another style, to take a writer's style and claim it as your own.

Black Book: A writers sketchbook, sometimes referred to as a piece book.

Blockbuster: Huge block letters that take up an enormous amount of space. Larger than throw-ups and used many times to cover up another writers work.

Graffiti Lingo

Bomb: The action of doing graffiti. Painting or marking surfaces with ink and/or paint. Putting up your tag. ie "Jimmy is going to bomb that wall." In these politically charged days, this can take on a whole new meaning.

Bombing: To go out and write graffiti art. ex: "Jimmy is bombing that wall." Again in these days be very careful who hears you speaking like this.

Bubble Letters: Balloon styled letters, easily rendered, very basic. Often used for throw-ups.

Burner: A full fledged piece. Fully rendered letters with multiple color fills and backgrounds, characters,etc.

Fill-in: A throw up with a filled in center, or simply thought of as the colored areas inside of letter patterns.

Getting up: The action of going out and tagging.

Going Over: Crossing out someone else's work with your own,with the idea that your work is better.

King: The highest compliment given to a graffiti writer. A person who has mastered the form and established his dominance.

Mad: Crazy, very advanced styles or lots...ex: "Jimmy has mad styles." or "Jimmy has mad spray cans at the crib."

Rack: To steal.

Sick: Very, very good at technique and has great individual style. Usually pronounced as "siiiick!" ex: Johnny has sick style. Meaning Johnny is very good.

Tag: A writers signature, his "nom de plume". For example "Scape" is my tag.

Throw up: Your name in big bubble letters. Done VERY quickly...Used primarily to simply cover space and grab attention. Done in no more than three minutes. Proving you were there.

Toy: An inexperienced writer, or a writer that has not progressed. A term of disrespect.

Up: A writer that is active and has a lot of work in circulation.

Westside: A common phrase shouted from many a parking lot, designating an affiliation or allegiance to The West Coast of the US. Was formerly a calling for and by gangs of the westside of Los Angeles. Made popular by rap records and now tends to lean on an affiliation of all things West Coast Hip Hop.

Window-Down: A piece that only goes from the windows down on a subway car.

Whole Car: A train car that is painted from top to bottom, and end to end. Covering all available surfaces, windows, etc.

Graffiti Styles

Today, graffiti is considered a form of art which is primarily used to express social or political views. The word originates from Italian and literally means scratched. Even in ancient times, graffiti was used as we can see in cave drawings, ruins, sepulchers and even pictographs. Some languages have originated for graffiti. One example is the Safaitic language, which is an ancient Arabic dialect.

The first modern graffiti style of writing was found in ancient Greece, in the city of Ephesus. This city is today located in Turkey. Similar sites have been found in Guatemala and Ireland.

Many people think that this art of writing is a complete waste of time and is not an art at all. However, this style helps us to understand the modern lifestyle and language. Writings invariably showcase the social condition in any era, and this style actually helps to showcase the mood of a particular period in history throw its graphical depictions.

Graffiti Styles

In today's world, this style of writing is seen as street art and has huge potential. However, defacing public property with this art or writing offensive messages is a crime and you should never indulge in it.

You can write in this style using chalk, spray paint, pastels or sparkles, but one of the most beautiful work of art can be created in the following manner.

First write the text in a fluid motion not sticking to any convention, uniformity or spacing between letters. Then thicken the letters by using double lines or making them into blocks. You can add a bit of artistry here by allowing the letters to overlap. Each letter should be legible but should not be a separate entity.

If you want, you can patterns to the letters while writing. Some common patterns used are serif or simple tail lines. However, if you use shadow lines, you can really bring out the written text to the forefront. You can use shadowing only on one side of the letter or add a shadow on every alternate letter on both sides. The choice is yours. Some graffiti artists use geometric shapes in such a way that they end up reading as text.

Once you have finished writing your text and adding all the special effects, it is time to color it. Use the same color to highlight similar patterns in the text. This will add life to your art.

After that, you can add special effects by using sparkle pens. And then, you are all set to stand back and admire your art.

In the US, in some cities, corporations are paying graffiti artists to advertise their products and services through this art. For many street artists, it has become a lucrative business. However, these advertisements cannot be done in public places. Some companies using legal form of this art for advertisement are Coca Cola, McDonald's and Toyota.

Rise of Graffiti

The graffiti art of the 1970's has made one of the biggest historical impacts on the visual arts. It has impacted and changed fashion, style, graphic design and even marketing and promotion used in advertising. Graffiti is a style of art and painting done with cans of spray paint. Surprisingly Its origin is the urban subways of new york city and it is still one of the major aspects that helped create the hip hop culture.

Graffiti was very unique for so many reasons. It is the only visual art form known to be created with no "physical touch". Meaning the hands and fingers don't touch the surface that the artwork is designed and painted on. The actual art is done with spray paint, held from a short distance of the surface, which means the artist had to have an accurate aim and there own perfect technique in shaping and designing the actual art. Another thing that makes this style of visual art so unique is that ninety percent of it was done outside in public. You could easily find graffiti on busses, trains, buildings, and walls. You not only understood the look and artwork of hip hop graffiti, you also understood that you were in a hip hop culture environment. Last but not least, and sadly, it is still the only art form that you can get arrested for doing. As beautiful and fascinating as it is, it is illegal to spray graffiti art on the subway trains and public buildings. It just goes to show the love these artists had for this craft, they were willing to take the risk of being arrested just to perform and display their artwork.

Rise of Graffiti

In many eyes this was not just a new form of self expression, but it was the most artistic form of self expression that the hip hop culture had to offer. Each artist has their own individual style, from the style of letters, to human and non human drawn characters, to the ways they blended different colors of paint on the walls. This art form was about not only expressing yourself, but also building a reputation as one of the top graffiti artists. All graffiti artist had their own special signature which at the time was called tags. Your tag was the signature "nick name" for your graffiti artwork if you were a graffiti artist. The tags was how these artists made a name for their selves and got recognition in the urban communities.

To this day, graffiti can be seen on Hip Hop album covers, posters, t-shirts, and flyers. It is consistently used in graphic design art that is used to promote hip hop concerts, albums, and other hip hop events. It is incorporated into our technology through graphic design. Hip Hop music changes but the graffiti never does! Even air brush graffiti is an extension to the original graffiti that was done with spray cans. Air brush graffiti can still be seen on fashion today.

Overall, hip hop graffiti art told a short story of an urban lifestyle and the hip hop culture. Painted walls of hip hop ciphers rapping, painted graffiti of break dancers dancing, and even painted graffiti of neighborhood kids rolling dice in the alley. This was more than visual art, it was also visual story telling. New york subways and walls tagged with graffiti will always be looked at as landmarks of the birthplace that originated and elevated the "graffiti art" in the urban community.