Wanna Make a Sick Graff Piece? Here’s how…

(WARNING: you cant learn graffiti in one day – be prepared for years of practice!)

Things You’ll Need

• Pens, crayons, markers, colored pencils, Karisma pencils for richness, etc.
• Stencils if you have any
• Any blank canvas or paper
  

Steps

1.     Become familiar with different styles of graffiti. Wherever you live, you can probably find graffiti nearby. If not, visit a city - graffiti is predominately urban. If this isn’t possible, go online. Hundreds of websites showcase graffiti; take a virtual tour of styles from across the globe. Some pieces are high-quality, but the more you see the better you’ll know the characteristic styles.

2.     Write down a name on paper. Start with any word, but your name is the best choice for beginners. Most serious graffiti artists start by developing a unique signature. As a beginner, print the letters, all in capitals. Use a pencil and draw lightly for easy erasing. Leave plenty of space between letters; you’ll expand them to fill in the space later. Make them big enough to work with, but not so big that it will take forever to complete the graffiti.Make your letters look like blocks ! Also put little pictures or stars inside the letters.

Choose a style for the name. Bubble letters are especially popular in graffiti but there are other styles too. You can have rounded edges or sharp, equally sized letters or some big letters and some small, etc. It’s easier to emulate a style, and have a picture of a graffiti piece in that style to refer to. Once you learn the basics you can develop your own style naturally. Then you must draw an “x” over the first letter. Outline that. Before you know it you have graffiti!

3. Outline the letters you have written to approximate the style you’re going for. Again, use pencil and write very lightly, as you’ll make many little mistakes. It will take time and patience to get the letters just right. Remember:Make the original words you wrote your guide, not your prison.
Don’t be afraid to alter the letters beyond all recognition.

4. Vary line thickness. You can make all the lines the same thickness, but you can approximate shading and a 3-D effect if the lines get thicker and narrower at different places (for example, the top and one side of an “o” might be very thick, while the bottom and other side is narrowed). Use your pencil to vary the thickness; you’re going to darken this out with ink or marker later, so it doesn’t need to be pitch black. By doing this step now, you can get a good idea of what thicknesses looks good before you make the lines permanent.

5. Add details as desired. Once your letters are as you want them, you can add additional details–with light pencil–if you choose to. Perhaps a lightning bolt for the dot of an “i” would be good, or eyes peering out of the holes in your “b”. You can put a bubble around the whole name, like in comic books. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

6. Copy your drawing. Put the pencils away, so now, everything is permanent. If you make any disastrous mistake(s)–you won’t be able to do much about it. Copy your drawing for a backup. Use a copier and adjust the darkness setting so that the light pencil lines show in the copy. You can also trace the drawing onto another piece of paper, but this will be difficult because of the lightness of your drawing. To trace what you have, wait until after the next step or trace a photocopy.

7. Blacken your pencil lines. Use pen or marker to darken the lines drawn with your pencil. These lines are more or less permanent, so be extremely careful. Don’t be discouraged with small mistakes; you can usually fix it so nobody else will know. Say if your pen line was too thick or you were jogged and went outside of the line, just fill it in so it’s 3D.

8. Add color to fill in your drawing with colored pencil, Again, it’s a good idea to look at examples before doing this, but really you can do anything you want except crayon. A very simple graffiti (a single work of graffiti) can have only one color. You can also easily do each letter in a different color or make the added details a different color than the letters. While you might be tempted to go crazy with color, sometimes simplicity is best. Graffiti artists traditionally had to work secretly for fear of getting caught so they could carry only one or two different colors of spray paint at a time–a lot of very good graffiti is just one color.

9. Keep practicing. If your graffiti turned out perfectly, congratulations. Now move on to different words and effects. If your graffiti did not look perfect, well, just try again. Follow the tips below, and who knows? You might get better. Or you could just close your eyes and start praying that it looks better. Anyway, carry your own “black book” and don’t copy people’s.

Tips

Look at the writing in comic books, particularly the creatively drawn action words like “Ka-Pow” and “Boom”. Many graffiti artists cite comic books as primary influences on their craft.

You don’t necessarily have to keep the lines you drew. In fact you may like the effect of having no borders around the color. To get this effect, don’t blacken your lines with pen or marker. Then, as you color in your sketch, erase the pencil lines or color over them. This method is a little bit more difficult to get perfect, so take your time.

A saying for Graffiti practice is, “if you want to be good, do one entire piece [of work] every day. If you want to be great, do five a day.” This seems like a lot if you take it literally, but the point is that the more you practice, the better you get. It’s not just a cliché, it’s true!

When you practice, DO NOT start a piece, get halfway through, and say, “this stinks, I’m crumpling it up.” No. Finish the whole thing, and then you have just gained more practice on all of those other parts. That ugly thing you just drew? Color it in anyhow. Later on, you’ll be happy you did.

More Coming soon….

Sketch City has run workshops in schools and in our warehouse space. We’re busy putting this section together, so please check back soon.