1000 Ideas for Graffiti and Street Art

 Every graffiti artist is a typesetter on the inside, or so it would seem given the intricate, complex, and often quantum (due to their impenetrability) works on the following pages. This chapter includes the ground zero of graffiti, i.e. total abstraction. From tags and 3D style to the more recent organic graffiti, letters and tags are the starting point from where the other schools and trends in urban art have evolved. Although it may seem otherwise, figurativism appeared on the graffiti scene much later than letters and abstraction. At first, figures and caricatures were used to accompany letters and were conceived as a secondary element, although the great majority of urban artists are currently 100 percent figurative and show no abstraction in their work. The influence of comics and illustration is evident, as is the world of cartoons. Many figurative artists also incorporate a degree of realism, which is surprising when you consider that their weapon of choice is a spray can and not a paintbrush. Although the characteristic tool for graffiti is spray paint, thousands of urban artists have opted to work totally or partially with alternative tools, such as stickers, stencils, rollers, and different types of paint or ink (plastic, acrylic, markers, etc.) Stickers and conventional brushes can achieve a degree of detail that is practically impossible with a spray can, even with the usual tricks of obstructing the nozzle to give finer lines. Stencils make it possible to repeat a single piece and even cover the streets of any city. Paint rollers let artists cover huge surfaces and create murals the size of a façade several stories high. 

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0013 Darco FBI. Paris, France / 0014 Koes. Bassano del Grappa, Italy / 0015 Astrid AKA CHOUR (3PP crew). Paris, France / 0016 MFG Freight Crew (ECTOE, RTYPE, HAIKU, KOLA, SMUT). Oakland, CA, USA / 0017 Dyset. Munich, Germany

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0031 Wolfgang Krell. Dortmund, Germany / 0032 MFG Freight Crew (ECTOE, RTYPE, HAIKU, KOLA, SMUT). Oakland, CA, USA

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0052 Via Grafik. Wiesbaden, Germany / 0053 Above. San Francisco, CA, USA

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0376 Danny “casroc” Casu. Antwerp, Belgium

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0803 Dr. Hofmann. Barcelona, Spain

Excerpted from 1000 Ideas for Graffiti and Street Art by Cristian Campos

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Notes

  1. rockpaperink-blog posted this