This is the fifth in a series of blog posts highlighting some of the drawings or doodlings (many of which are a series) that give you a peek into just how addicted to drawing I am!
Graffiti
For as long as I can remember, I have always admired well done graffiti. When I was around 10, I remember discovering what I called “lettering” and experimenting with drawing letters in as many styles as I could imagine (this is probably more like an early interest in typography). I remember seeing graffiti writing and trying some on my own, however, the underlying techniques are a little harder to pick up than you might think.
I really started to fall in love with graffiti when I discovered “Street Art” in books in the art section at Barnes and Noble and Borders. I never really attempted any on my own until I went on a mission trip to Japan when I was 31.
In 2010 I joined a team for this trip with my church to Tokyo. The organizer of the trip, Joe Giauque, had it planned to do street performances (mostly music) to garner interest and then invite onlookers to a young adult church in Machida. He put the call out and a team of about 10 of us showed up. There was one problem. Other than the Joe himself, there was only one other musician, a cowboy that played fiddle. Joe had a plan B, though; he asked the two of us artists on the team if maybe we could do our art as a street performance. I almost always balk when asked to let a bunch of people stare at me drawing. It makes me nervous and I end up drawing/painting much worse. Also, I honestly think people get bored watching because it takes a while before anything recognizable even appears. I thought about his idea though, and it came to me, if I only knew how to do really cool graffiti – that could be quick and fun to watch. So I bought a “How To” book (Graff: The Art & Technique of Graffiti by Scape Martinez) and delved into the world of writing “Graff”. I started practicing the art but had to transcribe it into marker art (I couldn’t be going to a foreign country and spray painting their walls) The following are my marker practice pages from my sketchbook.
When we got to Tokyo, we set up a speaker where I could jam some electronic and hip hop music. Then I laid down a sheet of poster board and got to work – it was blast!
We only got one video of me in action the whole time (Thank, Mike Galat!)
Before and since the trip I have doodled lots of little small pieces of graff just in fine liner.
The following year after the trip to Japan, I was asked by our middle school pastor at my church to paint one of my words on a large wall in the middle school building. This was my first (& only, to date) chance to try my hand a t a “burner”. Like I said, due to legality of spray painting buildings, I had really no experience with the traditional spray can medium of graffiti. So, in order to get this piece to look right, I projected one of the pieces from my “black book” onto the wall using an old school overhead projector. I traced my art with a pencil and then spent a week or two painting the three tones with a paint brush. It was sort of my “graffiti grand finale” as I turned my attention to other forms of art after this. As with anything, if you don’t use it (or stay practiced) you lose it. I would need to get back into practice to produce any writing up to the standard I was doing during this time.
This last big piece I did was on this wall of an abandoned building in Thailand in 2014. I actually did use spray paint on this one.
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