Tips For Your Drawing Graffiti Art

In particular the use of the bold style lettering is really distinctive to graffiti art. The images themselves will usually be hard hitting, and be painted in stark colours utilising strong shadows and outlines to add depth and definition. Images usually depict social or political issues close to the artist's heart.

Before you start a piece of graffiti art, you should draw a small scale version of the large piece you want to create first, then when you begin your actual piece, its a simple task of just scaling up your graffiti sketch.

If you need ideas for a graffiti font to use, there are plenty of sites online that have examples for you to copy. For the outlines, use a fine marker pen. In order to produce a 3D effect, shade around the letters you've outlined with a different colour. Then use permanent markers to colour in your letters.

Once you are ready to paint your sketch on to your larger canvas or wall, you need to draw a reference grid over your small drawing. Sketch a full size replica of the grid on to your wall or canvas that you are using for your scaled up graffiti piece. Use either chalk, charcoal or diluted paint to draw the large grid. To make marking the grid out easier, the simplest thing to do is to use a piece of string.

Use chalk or charcoal to transfer your small drawing on to you larger canvas. Use an aerosol can to paint the background in using diluted paint, keep the layer thin and allow it to dry before you start your colouring. When you've finished the outline and the background, it's time to add the colours and detail. Again use aerosols to add the colours. Start with the lightest colours first and the largest sections, and then move on to the detail and the smaller areas last.

When you've coloured your work in, you can add the fine definition with a brush to enhance the fine lines and borders around your figures and letters. You can preserve it for years to come with a thin layer of varnish.

These are all the steps you need to master if you want to paint impressive graffiti art.

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Is Graffiti An Art?

Graffiti is a medium. It is like paper,canvas or pencil. You can use things to make art or you can use those thing to make a grocery list, it's all up to you and what you choose to express using those tools.

A lot of artist today and in the history of art have done graffiti (Kith Harring and Basquiette pops into my mind right now), with Swoon selling pieces to Momma and Shepard Ferry, Fail and Banksy having huge shows (as well as a lot of other artists that are a little less known but are getting there), I don't think that this is ever a question - street art, is art.

Does that means that every person who write their name on the wall is an artist?! not really, just like not everyone who write a grocery list in an author. I think that has to do more with the intention of the artist then with the medium they work in.

Graffiti Art Doesn't Just Mean "Sprayed on Walls"

Graffiti art has a loose feel about it. There are no strict rules to creating graffiti art, except a few distinct characteristics that always make graffiti art appear stylish. Let's see what those characteristics are.

First, graffiti art are usually loose forms. But these forms are usually just clear enough to represent what they're supposed to represent. The shapes are loosely created, and the subjects overlap one another in a rather random manner. Highlights are applied to the image if needed but again, these are loosely applied.

Second, texts are usually visible, and drawn in an embossed manner that gives a 3D impression. These texts usually form a few words or a short phrase, and makes up a part of the entire graffiti artwork.

And finally, graffiti art is usually created with a wide variety of colors. Bright and luminous colors like red, orange, yellow, green and blue are preferred. There's little or no intention for color harmony and the goal here is to create a dazzling array of colors that draw attention to the graffiti art itself.

Due to these characteristics, it's no surprise that we see so many teenagers being drawn to graffiti art. But once you recognize these characteristics, you'll also come to understand that it's not all that hard to create a piece of graffiti art, even if you know little about drawing.

For a start, you may want to look up some tattoo images to use as reference images or to draw inspiration. Images like skulls or roses make great subjects for graffiti art.

Once you have your image ready, you'll need some magic markers as well. Try out the same image using different colors and see which end result you prefer. You may also wish to add in some texts.

Glittering markers make an excellent drawing tool for graffiti art. I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with these markers. And don't forget, never draw on public property without permission!

Don't Look Past Graffiti Art

Ever since I was little I have loved going to different cities and countries to learn from people and places that were different than what I was familiar with. My love for travel and for learning about different cultures only grew as I got older and eventually I went to university to study Urban and International Development. I chose this major simply because it would teach me about two of my favorite things: cities and other countries. I will never forget entering my first urban studies class and looking at the chalk board that said "Don't Look Past Graffiti Art." on it.

I rolled my eyes and wondered what kind of crazy situation I had gotten myself into with this class. I was intrigued that any real professor whose expertise is in urban studies would encourage let alone mandate that his students pay attention to the graffiti art that practically ruined the look and feel of many major cities in our country and around the world.

After a brief introduction of himself, the professor of that class began the semester by showing us a slide show of graffiti art from around the world. He played the entire show without saying a word of explanation. When it was finished he simply walked over to the chalk board and wrote another line underneath what he had already written about paying attention to graffiti art. He wrote: "Because it reveals the major issues of that culture's youth."

I got out my notebook for the first time that semester and wrote those two phrases onto the top of the first page. I was still hesitant about where the professor could possibly be taking an introduction like this, but I was more intrigued than before after watching the slide show of graffiti art and realizing just how artistic it truly was.

Our first assignment for that urban studies class was to find a photograph of graffiti art that was from a major U.S. city and to write a two page reflection on what we thought the graffiti art revealed about that particular city's youth. I had no idea when I chose a picture from Chicago and wrote about it just what I was doing to shape the rest of my life.

To make a long story short, that urban studies class and specifically our discussion of graffiti art revolutionized my thinking about the peoples of the world. I learned that a culture is revealed by small things like graffiti art that we usually take as annoying when we visit somewhere. All that to say, the next time you travel don't discount a city's graffiti art as something ugly or offensive. Instead, see what you can learn about the youth of that city through the graffiti art because I guarentee there is much to be learned.

Write In Graffiti

When most people think of graffiti, they think of outdoor murals and tags created with spray paint. While the street is the most popular place to write graffiti, the truth is that writing in graffiti can be done with virtually any writing utensil and blank canvas.

Before graffiti artists start bombing the streets, they typically learn how to write graffiti with pencil and paper. The following steps are intended to be an introduction to writing in graffiti.

Step1 Choose a word to write in graffiti. Many graffiti artists use their name or pseudonym.

Step2 Choose a graffiti style. There are dozens of unique styles for writing in graffiti. You might consider becoming familiar with different styles by taking note of professional pieces of graffiti in your city or online. One of the most popular graffiti styles for beginners is bubble letters.

Step3 Once you have found your graffiti style of choice, keep an example of it on hand for reference. Put your pencil to paper and make light strokes to mimic the style of your example. Erase and rewrite as necessary until you are satisfied with your pencil drawing.

Step4 Add details such as shading or graphics. Use your creativity. Keep it relatively simple until you grow comfortable writing more complex graffiti.

Step5 Use trace paper or a photo copier to make a copy of your completed pencil drawing. This will make it easy to start over in case you make a mistake in the next step.

Step6 Use a marker or pen to darken the pencil marks. Make them permanent. Use colored markers or crayons to fill in your letters and compete your graffiti writing.

Step7 Keep practicing and experimenting with graffiti to develop a unique style you can call your own.

Excellently Executed - The Secret Drawings of Graffiti Writers

The Secret Drawings of Graffiti Writers has successfully compiled a who's who of writer's writers in a format that looks so legit, you'd swear you could feel the grooves in the pages left by pencils and pens... as authentic and realistic as possible, there are even a few blank sheets to get up yourself! I even tried to peel the sticker off the inside cover!

Way before there were all these electronic networks, there was piecebooks. And within the confines of the book's covers, writers explored styles and studied up on the art. With that in mind, Sacha "SHR" Jenkins and David "Chino" Villorente have compiled dazzling pages from the real sketchbooks of graf legends like Zephyr, Lady Pink, Dondi and Sane for Piecebook: The Secret Drawings of Graffiti Writers (Prestel).

"Piecebooks are also used to collect work from other writers we respect/admire," says Villorente. "There are very few items a writer might buy at 14 years old that they'll still be purchasing and passing around at 41." Through close attention to design detail--simulated duct taped spine, illustration proportions and texture over 200-plus pages--the two have triumphed, where most have failed, in capturing graf's authenticity in book format. --Mass Appeal, Issue # 51

Before it hits the wall, graffiti is often painstakingly planned out in a sketchbook or piece book. Well-worn and dog-eared, these books are passed along from artist to artist as a way of sharing ideas and offering instruction. Here hundreds of drawings, most of them never before published, are reproduced on uncoated paper to resemble the pages of an authentic piecebook. Bold and beautiful works from graffiti history s most important sources or seeds Zephyr, Dondi, Daze, CRASH, Lady Pink, T-Kid, CAP and Ghost, among others represent a dizzying array of techniques.

The authors, former graffiti practitioners themselves, offer biographies of the artists and an introductory essay on why piecebooks have become such valuable historical records. Fans of graffiti will find this an irresistible inside look at how their favorite artists perfected their talents.

Graffiti Breaks Free From Wall

The Hip-hop theatre pioneer Jonzi D explores the issue of whether graffiti really is an artform or merely vandalism. He directs a team of six of the UK's best break- dancers and body-poppers, who become "physical calligraphy" alongside specially commissioned graffiti "sculptures" and on-stage video animations.

The dancers, representing paints and colours, move within large, sculpted graffiti-style letters made of wood, steel and upholstery, all created by the British graffiti artist Prime, of Sculptural Graffiti. The dance theatre piece, set to a score by DJ Pogo that combines hip-hop break-beats and scratch patterns, charts the story of an obsessive graffiti writer.

"We're not trying to define whether graffiti art is a crime or not: we know that it is," Jonzi D says. "But it is also an artform. We are having a creative discussion on the vandalism and the criminality and the artistry of the form."

The graffiti artist is played by John Berkavitch, a performance poet and breakdancer who is also a graffiti artist. "Like a puppet master, he shapes the bodies of the dancers with an imaginary graffiti wand into images that come to life," Jonzi D says. "He is exorcising his personal and creative demons in the only way he knows how."

Since graduating from the London Contemporary Dance School in 1993, Jonzi D has dedicated himself to hip-hop theatre, creating Lyrikal Fearta in 1995 and Aeroplane Man in 1999. He was an associate artist at The Place, London, and has performed dance theatre all over the world. He is also the creator and host of Breakin' Convention, the annual hip-hop festival at Sadler's Wells in London.

Graffiti Law Tagged Out

A LAWSUIT spurred by the fashion and video game designer Mark Ecko has at least temporarily won back for young New Yorkers (ages 18 to 21) the right to purchase spray paint and broad-tipped markers.

Some stern adults in the city are certain that the only reason any youngster would want to possess such art supplies is to add to New York's graffiti. The law, spearheaded by City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., went into effect in January and was suspended in early May by a judge pending the outcome of Ecko's lawsuit. The ban still applies to New Yorkers under 18.

For Vallone and other fans of the law, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it's part of their war on the classic image of New York as a gritty, filthy playground for the lawless. The young plaintiffs in the Ecko-funded lawsuit argue that such restrictions on artistic tools, which do not distinguish between legal and illegal uses, are pre-emptive assaults on the right to free speech.

Writing Graffiti Style

You see it everywhere these days, from the fronts of T-shirts to the underside of bridges. You can buy coffee table books on the subject and even download fonts for your computer that attempt to emulate it. Graffiti art is everywhere, and there are as many different styles as there are individuals who use a can of spray paint and the side of a building as their medium. But there are some basic tag styles that can be emulated if you are trying to learn how to write graffiti style.

The most basic style of graffiti writing is also the simplest and most unornamented. The letters are usually shaped much like you would write them with a pen in a Roman type font where the letters don’t touch each other. This kind of work is commonly seen in long written works or as a signature on a larger piece of graffiti. It is the perfect place to start when learning graffiti writing, though, because anyone can do it.

The next step up in difficulty would be “throw-up” style, which incorporates the outlines of letters into the design.

This kind of tag can be done very quickly with practice because the letters can be squished together such that you can form a whole word with one fluid line. (It is probably best to practice on paper with a pen or pencil before getting out your airbrush gun.) A commonly appearing form of this style is the bubble style (which you’ve probably seen if you’ve ever known a teenaged girl who doodled in her notebooks), where the outlines are large and look like bubbles, much curvier than a standard outline. Sometimes bubble style takes a little longer than other outline forms, and it can be more ornate than other types of outlining.

Once you have mastered these basics, you’re ready to move on to “semi-wild” style. This is where the fun of graffiti writing comes in, where you can really show off your personality in your designs. This is a style where the letters begin to get squished, stretched, tilted or twisted. There is a lot more ornamentation (arrows, bars, starbursts, etc.) surrounding (and as part of) these letters than in the more simple styles. The letters are usually still readable in semi-wild style, even for people who are not well-versed in graffiti writing.

If you want to try semi-wild out for yourself, pick a simple word (like your name). Write out the letters as you normally would (not in cursive, just in block letters or a plain style). Write it again in an outline or bubble style. You may want to try several different kinds of lettering, from big and bubbly to straight and blocky. As you do this, think about how the letters fit together, or how they might be made to fit together. How would it look if you tilted the first letter out and laid it on top of the second letter, then put the third letter a little higher on the page but just touching the second? Then you could place the fourth letter under the third on its side, just sliding into that hole you made.

Maybe you could break up the letters (if you want to see how this could work and aren’t sure you can draw it, take simple outlines of the letters and cut them up, arranging them in different ways running in and out of the other letters. Maybe you could add an arrow to the end of the last letter of your name, or a starburst instead of the dot over one of the letters. You can embellish any way you want, that’s part of the fun.

From “semi-wild” style the classification moves to wild style, which is similar to semi-wild only with even more ornamentation and twisting of the letters. This style of tagging can be hard to read and looks more like a random, wrecked pile of letters than an easily distinguishable word. These pieces skirt the line between words used for the purpose of communication and letters (or the basic building blocks of letters, anyway) used more as art. (Of course art itself is a means of communication, but a different, less direct level.)

Obviously it takes a lot of practice to be able to do graffiti art with any skill, but once you get the basics down there are all sorts of variations and designs you can add to make a simple word into something a lot more beautiful. We already talked about using stars to dot letters. They can also be seen inside circles as a stand-in for an O or as part of the decoration. Hearts can also be used in place of O’s, and crosses in place of T’s. Serifs (or “tails” on the letters) can be exaggerated by being made into arrows, daggers, airplanes or other simple shapes.

You can draw shapes that look like holes or “chips” in the graffiti to make it look like it’s been chipped off or destroyed somehow. You can put different symbols inside the letters, or put the word inside a larger symbol or design. And of course when you outline the letters you can use different colors and patterns to fill in the letters. There is no end to the creativity and interesting forms you can express when working with graffiti writing.

On the streets you will find many different variations on these themes (though we don’t recommend you practice your new skills on public property). Depending on where you live, you are likely to see a dominant style. Whole books have been written about different styles such as the Latino “Old School Cholo” style of upper case, square letters, which has been popular in the Los Angeles area since the 1930s. New York’s style is bubbly like Broadway (said to be result of lax supervision), which Philadelphia’s is scratchy and rushed (because cops cracked down on taggers in the old days).

Whenever you visit a new city you will likely see some different kinds of graffiti. Many cities are less concerned with covering up graffiti these days and instead view it as a kind of public art (and a kind of museum art, in some places). As you practice you will develop your own style, certain embellishments you like and perhaps a whole new way of thinking about those simple letters and words that are all around us. Give graffiti writing a try and see if it doesn’t change the way you think about those who would choose to express themselves this way.

Amazingly Enduring Street Artist

This is a snapshot of an amazingly enduring street artist known as Above and his travels across North America and Europe. This guy gets up in mad quantities and with the most unique styles.

Street artists such as Banksy, D*Face, , Swoon, Twist, 108, Ellis Gallagher, Neck face , and Os Gemeos have earned international attention for their work and in turn migrated the showing of their works to the museum or gallery setting as well as the street. It is also not uncommon for street artists to achieve commercial success Shepard Fairey, Faile, WK Interact, Kaws and Buff Monster doing graphics for other companies or starting their own merchandising lines.

Create The Graffiti Sketches

Graffiti like anything else. Usually requires plenty of practice to be any good. It can also be helped along with preparation, planning and perfecting your next piece of graffiti art before you even pick up that can of spray paint. You can work on perfecting your work when you create graffiti sketches.

Photo By keusta.net

A few simple steps and plenty of imagination are all you need to create graffiti sketches. Oh, a pen and paper might help, too.

Step1 Decide where you want this graffiti to be. You don’t have to know the exact location, such as under the bridge next to the tree by the bend in the road, but you should have some idea of the size and shape of your concrete or other canvas. A sketch that covers a large, solid area is going to differ from one that is meant to be put along the border of an overpass.

Step2 Sketch out your canvas. Draw the borders of the area you plan to conquer. A large wall will be represented by a rectangle or square, or you can choose any other shape you want to fill with your work.

Step3 Pick your subject. The world is yours. Keep in mind, however, a generic subject, such as a wrestler or snake, is going to be easier to reproduce than a specific subject, such as Hulk Hogan or a Western Diamondback Rattler with exactly seven teeth, forked tongue and colors exactly matching the species. But then again, you are preparing in advance, so you have time and the tools to pretty much perfect anything you want.

Step4 Keep lines fat and bold for easy viewing. Remember that you are working on a large scale, much larger than the piece of paper in front of you. You may want to practice the outlines with a thick marker that will give you a better idea of the work’s bold outlines necessary.

Step5 Fill the space entirely. Some of the best graffiti work includes shading, designs and shadows in the background. Once you have your main subject down pat, work on creating a background for the subject that can also be perfected.

Step6 Decide on colors. Too many colors will look too busy, so keep it simple but make sure the colors that are side by side are different enough to stand out from each other. For instance, do not place a bluish green directly next to a greenish blue and expect people to tell the difference from a distance. You can practice the colors by shading and adding hues with colored pencils.

GRAFF BEATS OVER HOT BOMBS !!!

Street art is any art developed in public spaces that is, "in the streets" though the term usually refers to art of an illicit nature, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives.

I get this video from youtube. Wow I like a sound music and very beautyful graffiti arts. Show for you.

The Rise of Graffiti Arts

Towards 1968 some young black artists and Puerto Rican artists started bombing trains with their tags, their graffiti names. These tags had to be visible to allow a kind of “ascent” or “getting up”. These graffiti can be viewed as the sign of an identity that has finally been recovered.

Like the caveman singing at the sight of the impression of his hand on a rock, these young people feel triumph at the sight of their graffiti. Dondi White makes the same kind of comparison in his first pictures in 1983. Does the impression left by the prehistoric artist not have something prophetic about it? Does it not announce, from a dark grotto, that man will survive? Does it not indicate that history will be reborn in the original form of graffiti, also painted by artists working in the night and expressing, in this way, their aspirations to a new world order?

Over the years (1968-1980) all kinds of styles of imaginative decoration emerged in the field of “tags”. Realism and Romanticism co-existed in the light of the existence of enemies and obstacles such as the police, stool pigeons, various gangs, wolves, dogs, the huge fences and the cleaning installations threatening both the graffiti creator and his work.

So it is not surprising to note that the graffiti-writers move out of the stage of being students, disciples or masters to become a prince or king of subway art and street art. It is also obvious that it is only one more step to become an artist. Art, after all, is above all a pictorial representation of consciousness.

This definition began to appear for the first time at the end of the 1970’s and the start of the 1980’s and it’s just as important in the history of art – which after all aims at humanizing the world – as Marcel Duchamp when he turned a urinal into a work of art, shocking the world.

The New York Graffiti movement was like a bomb thrown into the art world. Few genres have managed to attract so much media attention and the discussions surrounding the movement persisted. Various films, books, newspaper articles and items in the official art reviews have concerned themselves with the debate. In the television film “Wild Style”(1981), graffiti is portrayed as a kind of total art, with train spray can art, break dancing, hip hop- and rap music constituting an invisible whole.

The graffiti movement made it’s appearance in Europe as an artistic movement in 1983 when the Yaki Kornblidt Gallery displayed the first graffiti pictures.

Well known dutch collectors bought a large number of splendid graffiti works by artists like Rammellzee, Blade, Quik, Futura 2000, Bill Blast, Crash, Dondi White, Seen and Zephyr.

It was an exciting time. The enthusiasts fought over the best pictures and all the 1983 and 1984 exhibitions sold out. The prices followed along with the trend.

The museums quickly took an interest in graffiti and Wim Beerens, who was director of Rotterdam Boymans-van Beuningen museum, and Frans Haks, director of the Groningen Museum, bought various works.

In 1983 Wim Beeren organized the first large-scale official exhibition about the New York Graffiti movement for the Boymans museum and it attracted 25.000 visitors, mostly very excited. The catalogues and the admission tickets were sold out at a blink of an eye. The public delighted in the vivid and twinkling colours, the movement, the aesthetics and the rhythm of those very expressive paintings.

The Groninger Museum took over the show and over 40.000 visitors took the show in. The works of Koor, A-One and Toxic were not part of the shows, because those artists were not really known in The Netherlands, but this is now recognized as a mistake.

The enthusiasm spread to Germany when the well-known collector Ludwig purchased some of the artists’ works and graffiti made a tour of German museums.

In 1986 the Groninger Museum organised the first exhibition dedicated to Rammellzee and 3.000 visitors stormed the museum at the opening and some paintings had to be temporarily withdrawn from the exhibition. The four week show attracted 10.000 people.

Street Arts with Above !

This is a snapshot of an amazingly enduring street artist known as Above and his travels across North America and Europe. This guy gets up in mad quantities and with the most unique styles.

This Video show you about STREET ARTS LIFE!

Graffiti on Girls - Body Paint Arts Meet Street Style

Tattoo art and graffiti have always been closely correlated. So it seems fitting that actual graffiti should be the next wave of body art.

Those graffiti artists are naughty boys and if you need any further proof, feast your eyes on these selections. I can only hope that someone will do body art soon in Blek Le Rat or Banksy styles, as that would make this body art pop even more.

See the Gallery

Relationship Between Graffiti and Hip Hop

Hip Hop Graffiti

In America around the late 1960s, graffiti was used as a form of expression by political activists, and also by gangs such as the Savage Skulls, La Familia, and Savage Nomads to mark territory. Towards the end of the 1960s, the signatures—tags—of Philadelphia graffiti writers Top Cat, Cool Earl and Cornbread started to appear.

Around 1970-71, the centre of graffiti innovation moved to New York City where writers following in the wake of TAKI 183 and Tracy 168 would add their street number to their nickname, "bomb" a train with their work, and let the subway take it—and their fame, if it was impressive, or simply pervasive, enough—"all city".

Bubble lettering held sway initially among writers from the Bronx, though the elaborate Brooklyn style Tracy 168 dubbed "wildstyle" would come to define the art.The early trendsetters were joined in the 70s by artists like Dondi, Futura 2000, Daze, Blade, Lee, Zephyr, Rammellzee, Crash, Kel, NOC 167 and Lady Pink.

The relationship between graffiti and hip hop culture arises both from early graffiti artists practicing other aspects of hip hop, and its being practiced in areas where other elements of hip hop were evolving as art forms.

Graffiti is recognized as a visual expression of rap music, just as breakdancing is viewed as a physical expression.

Graffiti - The Writing on the Wall

Graffiti has always been given a negative connotation as it is seen as a defacement of a piece of property with the used of paint and other items. It has also been inextricably linked with the hip hop culture and has become one of the main elements of the movement. Despite the negativity that some people feel towards graffiti, it has slowly become one of the foremost art forms in modern society.

Graffiti's History




Despite seeming to be an all too modern art form, graffiti has always been around even in ancient times. Remains and relics from the ancient Roman city Pompeii reveal a world where people expressed their thoughts emotions by writing on walls and on other public and private items. Everything from poems to various drawings was found preserved in the ancient walls. This kind of society in ancient Rome is beautifully depicted in the introductory scenes of the HBO series Rome. The animators of the two season TV series depicted Roman streets and walls covered with graffiti that ranged from the obscene and sexually explicit to depictions that were political in nature.

Rome wasn't the only place where ancient graffiti was found. The Egyptians were also known to write on the walls aside from their highly celebrated hieroglyphics. In Saudi Arabia, it is widely recognized that a form of ancient Arabic language called Safaitic was only found scratched into boulders and rocks in the Syrian and Jordanian deserts.

During war eras and choppy political periods in the United States, people have also seen various forms of graffiti from World War Two's "Kilroy Was Here" to Dick Nixon "Before He Dicks You" during the 1970s. Another famous graffiti are the immortal words "Clapton is God" found in the London Underground.

Modern Day Graffiti
Modern Day Graffiti is mostly associated with the Hip Hop Culture. There are various forms of graffiti art as well as a multitude of artists that leave tags on their work. Notable is TAKI 183 and Julio 204. These individuals and a lot of others left their stamps in public walls and also in the heart of modern day art. Graffiti as it is found today has become very elaborate and have evolved from simple images to more elaborate slogans, images and other spray paint creations.

Graffiti Tributes are a common occurrence all over the streets of New York and on the prominent cities in the United States. These are often tributes given to people of prominence that have passed away. Most notable are the hip hop legends that have died like Tupac, B.I.G, Jam Master Jay, Big L and Big Pun. Other than Hip Hop legends, "greats" like Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were also immortalized in graffiti artwork.

From the Streets to Galleries
In 2006 graffiti art found its way into the halls of the Brooklyn Museum. Here, artists like Lady Pink, Crash and others were officially celebrated as great artists. The curator of the Museum hoped that by this process, the negative view that people had about graffiti will change for the better.

All over the world, graffiti is slowly getting the recognition that it deserves. Though it is still not a generally accepted art form and is still often viewed as a form of vandalism, people are slowly changing their ideas about graffiti and soon consider it to be an official art form.

Graffiti and Street Art

Since the early Neanderthals scratched out the Bison on the moist caves of Eastern France, Graffiti and Street Art have remained a very raw form of expressive Fine Art, which have shunned all class barriers and have emerged as a separate thread of work. Graffiti is derived from the Italian root meaning, "scratched out." Technically, to narrow down its scope would be to define it as a surface art on the surfaces it is "not meant" to be displayed. For example, you would not define a ramshackle wall, or a car, or a window as a canvas to any artist worth his/her salt. For Graffiti Artists however, that would be a perfectly normal platform to present their body of work.

Graffiti & Street Art so boldly lie on the border of vandalism and art that it is difficult to eulogize them without feeling a bit like singing Paeans to LSD or Morphine. However Graffiti and Street Art, even though pursued doggedly by law and order have steadily metamorphosed into an important mouthpiece of rebel expression.

Simply put, Graffiti and Street Arts are art pieces by artists with no inclination or the wherewithal to resort to the conventional forms of display, who though are bubbling with a strong urge to express themselves.

The profiles of Graffiti and Street Art closely follow an underground, anti-law route because of the angst they carry. They are art forms, usually generated in ghettos and tough neighborhoods, where there are few rules and therefore explosive creativity. Graffiti Artists are people, seething inside to stamp their territory, on walls, buildings, bridges, and yeah toilets too.

Graffiti and Street Art took a long time to come out of the ghettos, and be recognized as art. Although they are omnipresent phenomena, Graffiti and Street Art came onto the forefront only towards the development of the Hippie Culture in 70's. This was a time when people broke out of conditioning to see Graffiti & Street Art as art. The first opening of Graffiti was at Rome by Fab5 Freddy and soon other artists flooded the New York, London, and Paris art scenes.

Graffiti Artists are most often, nameless personas who treat art as a hit and run (often from the police and anti-graffiti squads). The process of claiming a patch of property (a wall, a car, a piece of tin, rooftops, and so on) is called "tagging" and it is a cross between turf war and creativity. Often gang wars have erupted on claims to turf. This is also, where Graffiti and Street Art connect with rap as an underground culture, which is always at odds with the civilized society. However, this edginess is what has given this art form a spontaneity that "designer" arts lack. The nervous energy is almost visible in the stark graphics and bold designs that spring out from the most unlikely of spaces. It is difficult not to appreciate this "vandalism" art form despite the gore and anger it carries.

Apart from the aesthetics of art, this art form is a visual documentation of grassroots societies, especially in western and Japanese sub cultures. Since Graffiti and Street Art are more a form of youth rebel art, the message that they seek to convey is at once in your face and subtle. There are subtexts that can be read from these Graffiti and Street Arts. For example, Graffiti Arts in Roman times is an important source of the study of society at that time (there is a Graffiti Art on the crucifixation of Jesus found in ancient Roman ruins).

However, with the lateral movement of Graffiti and Street Art into living rooms and art galleries, owing to avant-garde artistes, indicates that they have been accepted at large but the doubts remain. For example, Michael Fay stays hung between being labeled a criminal and an artiste in Singapore when he defaced a car. Whatever be the motive and the background of the creators of Graffiti and Street Art, it is undoubtedly an expression of passion, which finds many patrons.

Amazing Street Art - Graffiti

Those graffiti are very interesting, some looks very weird and some cool. It seems that the artists of those really have rich imagination.


Traditional graffiti also has increasingly been adopted as a method for advertising; its trajectory has even in some cases led to its artists' working on contract as graphic artists for corporations.[2] Street art is a label often adopted by artists who wish to keep their work unaffiliated, and strongly political. Street artists are those whose work is still largely done without official approval in public areas.

For these reasons street art is sometimes considered "post-graffiti" and sometimes even "neo-graffiti".[3] Street art can be found around the world and street artists often travel to other countries foreign to them so they can spread their designs.