An Introduction to Graffiti

by cross-one

If you want to do graffiti and are afraid to break the law please stop reading this now. Legal graffiti is an oxymoron. A scourge. Graffiti is not a form of art, it is not made for MTV, the back of your backpack, t shirts or impressing chicks. It's a community, a hobby, a lifestyle, a brotherhood. It's a place people exist and live, please do not shit in our house, respect our rules and those who have come before you.

Learn to tag first, and to learn to tag you need to learn to read it. Ride the buses and all that, look for it when you're walking around. Then you need to emulate it.

It takes about 2 years of nonstop everyday filling all your notebooks with tags until you can even think about not being a toy. Toy is tagger slang for someone who doesn't know shit, or a poser. We also don't call ourselves taggers, we call ourselves writers.

And before you ask yes you need to learn to tag before you can do those insane artistic murals, called pieces. Tag first, baby steps, thats all there is to it.

It'll help a lot if you can get someone to show you. A lot of people think that writers are like gangsters, but I've experienced nothing but a tight community with a few exceptions. Generally nice people. Graffiti came from hip hop not rap, it also has strong punk roots.

Just keep on "bookworming", buy some magazines from your local skateshop, hip hop store or wherever and eventually writers will find you. So long as you realize you don't know shit and are respectful they won't mind helping you out a bit.

You'll need something to write too, a name. Don't choose something toy like "death" or "stoner-dude". In general 3 letter names are reserved for crews (groups of people who write together, like awr [angels will rise]). You want something cool like shok, skuf, saber or zephyr. A lot of times people get there names given to them by older writers. don't choose something too long either, and if you don't like it don't be afraid to change to something else till you find something that fits.

Oh yeah its also considered impolite or disrespectful to ask someone what they write. Respect is also everything in graffiti, but remember RESPECT IS EARNED NOT GIVEN.

Anywho after two years you can start actually "getting up" (deface property). You need streakers, or paint sticks (art stores), or paint pens (pens with a little spraypaint ball inside them) or really big markers like magnums or pilots. www.beatbreaks.com is a good site (look under art supplies).

I don't recommend scribing, or carving windows. You can do it with any old rock, a chip from a spark plug's ceramic or a scribe from a glass store but most police take pictures of every glass tag, so if you get caught you can get put away for a long ass time (very expensive to replace a glass window).

Then theres spraypaint. ACE cans and those cheap ones have caps on them that make graffiti impossible. OSH cans are the best of the worse, they'll do in a fix because there cheap but have a tendency to fuck up and have shitty colors, except for OSH silver which looks sick.

Krylon and Rusto are the good stuff, Rusto colors look different from Krylon (make sure it says "flat"), you learn to recognize the difference and get a preference after a while.

There's also Montana and Beltone, which are designed for graffiti, but expensive. Plus you can rack (steal) Krylon, Rusto and OSH cans. But you also need caps, if you don't live near a graff friendly store then just buy a hundred or so off of the Internet (they're cheap wholesale, as in ~10 bucks for a hundred).

Normal caps (stock) usually spray out too much paint and therefor drip (very bad). Fat caps spread out the paint and make a big line, good for fills and throwups. You can make fat caps look neat and such by going really fast with them. Stock caps can also be used though, you just need to experiment with speed and how close you hold it to the wall. ironically using stock caps is one of the best ways to get can control.

Outlines make less come out and are good for anything (Beltone and Montana come with them). Rusto caps have a dot in them and are good for fills, or anything else. The difference between American and German caps is merely a matter of preference, though I like Americans more myself.

Throwups are basically not very complicated pieces or bubble letters, traditionally black and white. You can do them fast and if you're good you can do them with style (style is everything). If you're going to do a throwup make sure you fill it, because you're a toy if you don't. Oh yeah going out and doing throwups all over is called bombing.

Pieces are murals, you'll learn to develop your own style through practice. You need to practice a lot and get can control too like on a shed in your friends back yard or something. You should "cut" your lines, move fast with precision, calm, no thoughts running through your mind. Straight neat lines are much harder then they look. The secret to making a piece burn though is shading, gradients and detail.

Characters are also fun to do, you just draw someone with really extreme features. Usually start with a circle, a line where the eyes and nose are going to be, then draw the nose, the eyes, the ears, the jaw n like that, so that you're like going in a circle filling in the person's detail. Learn to use lots of shading and take your time, it helps a lot. Think of everything in 3D not 2D with shading. The nice thing about graffiti is it gives you art, design, fighting, quick thinking and running skills that transfer to other things.

Which brings us to our next point, the police. In short fuck em. if you go out solo or just one other person, sober, and aren't a fucking moron you wont get caught. keep your eyes open, and if you see the police, or some off duty fireman who wants to be a hero run. run and don't stop, run to a place cars cant get to like train tracks and run until your veins pump battery acid, then run some more. i've had had 6 cops chasing after me for half a night. hop some fences, stash anything that could used against you and keep running.

we rarely get caught, thats why police hate us so much.

Also if you get good and want to go bust a sick piece (or look at some) without worrying about the police you need to learn the spots, like underground tunnels, huge walls in the middle of nowhere. Then theres layups, where they store the trains at. Thats a whole 'nother side of graffiti (I'm a street bomber myself, though i've hit up the trains a few times).

So lastly i give you some basic rules graffiti, do not break them.

• DO NOT BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS! Biting is copying someones style, the way they write there letters, something like that. You know exactly when you're doing it, so don't. You'll seriously get fucked up bad if you do, even if its out of a magazine or something on the Internet (its a close community, word gets around).
• Respect those who have come before you, learn the history
• Do not ex other peoples tags, even if they ex'd you first, this is for gang bangers and toys who start shit because they have no style. "If you have beef eat a pork chop."
• Do not tag tombstones, peoples houses (fences are fair game), memorials, or cars (except police cars, U-Haul trucks, semis and abandoned cars).
• Throw ups go over tags, pieces go over throw ups. this is how it is, don't cry about it.

If you're a pussy graff will motivate you to get out there, you'll meet cool people and see some weird shit. So go buy a copy of the "wild style" video, check out all the sites on graffiti.org and read the few good posts on puregraffiti.com and bombingscience.com.

Also don't ever put crowns or any of that shit above your tags or pieces, its called the mark of the toy for a reason.

cross-one AT ziplip DOT com