For my project I thought I’d look at graffiti because when coming up with my first quick sketch storyboard I wanted to include graffiti within my digital book as part of it, and to be able to do this I need to research about it to be able to come up with an effective structure.
Graffiti are writing or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched, or painted illicitly on a wall or other surface, often within public view.Graffiti range from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and they have existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
In modern times, paint (particularly spray paint) and marker pens have become the most commonly used graffiti materials. In most countries, marking or painting property without the property owner’s permission is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime.
Graffiti may also express underlying social and political messages and a whole genre of artistic expression is based upon spray paint graffiti styles. Within hip hop culture, graffiti have evolved alongside hip hop music, b-boying, and other elements.Unrelated to hip-hop graffiti,gangs use their own form of graffiti to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti as it’s known today began in the late 1960s in Philadelphia.
Many graffiti artists ‘tag’ their work.“Tagging” is a way for street artists to sign their name anonymously. They often use random words or symbols and then embellish them with stars or crowns. This research will help me when producing the composition of the graffiti within my work by including a tag from the character I will be producing within my book. This relates to my project because the idea of me rebelling against myself by illustrating is there by producing an illustrated short story digital book with a narrative but it will have rebellion within rebellion as, in the most liked idea I’ve came up with so far, the character is walking down the street and graffitis something onto a wall, therefore being rebellion within itself.
GRAFFITI. From the Italian graffito (scribbling), the practice of drawing symbols, images, or words on private or public surfaces without permission. Ancient Romans wrote graffiti, as have many of the world’s cultures. The modern graffiti movement, associated with the hip-hop culture of break dancing and rap music, started primarily among black and Latino teenagers in Philadelphia and New York in the late 1960s. In 1971, the New York Times ran a story about “Taki 183,” a messenger who had been writing his “tag,” or stylized signature, all over New York, and graffiti took off. “Taggers” and “burners,” who painted elaborate “pieces,” short for masterpieces, usually wrote on subway cars, which had the advantage of moving their writing across the city.
Graffiti elicited strong opinions. To graffiti writers, it was a thriving subculture. To many intellectuals, it was a new and vital art form. To city officials, however, graffiti was illegal vandalism. New York established an anti-graffiti task force and an undercover graffiti police unit and spent many millions of dollars on experimental solvents and train yard security improvements. By the mid-1980s, New York had cut down on graffiti, but by then the art form had spread across the United States and to Europe. A new kind of “gang graffiti” that marks territory and sends messages to rival gangs became common in Los Angeles in the late 1980s.
This website produces hundreds of different type faces. This is what you get if you type in graffiti. I think this is really effective because it shows what people think of when they produce something that has to do with graffiti, its usually big, outstanding writing with bubble letter or messy letters that show the rebellion of neat, tidy, almost legible writing, which is rebellion in itself but to then spray paint it onto a building that is classed as illegal, it really helps the rebellion message to it thats why I want to include it in my digital book because it shows rebellion really clearly within it and me illustrating it will show the rebellion against myself. When producing my graffiti within my book, if I choose to do so when producing my concepts and developments, I will defiantly take inspiration from this research and the techniques artists have used to produce different type faces of graffiti style and Banksy’s work and what he composes and the message he puts across within his graffiti.
So, as you can see from my research graffiti dates back a bit and relates to people expressing themselves, but being stereotyped as teenagers rebelling the artist Bansky put a stop to this when he started doing graffiti tags around cities that are now famous and he’s not a rebelling teenager, therefore trying to change the stereotype and being creative at the same time.
As you can see here, Banksy has a lot of different types of graffiti that he creates and displays for a wide audience to see. A lot of his pieces depict rebellion as well, which is really effective for my project because I need to look at existing ways in which artists use rebellion within their work. Here you can see him using the general idea of rebellion within his ideas and thats what I want to take inspiration from. Within my book I want to depict the graffiti to look something like this and just a normal person is walking down the road and they graffiti it to show their rebelling by breaking the law and graffitiing a wall. Looking at these examples have really informed me and inspired me to do this within my own work, enabling me to produce effective work for my audiences by actually studying real life graffiti and then applying the techniques I see here to my own work like block words, words that suit the image e.g. the child’s writing with the picture of the child, and the 3D aspect to the graffiti, a lot of graffiti artists make their letters look 3D within the wall to make them stand out, and colourful, I want to apply these techniques used within the examples to my work to enhance what I will be including in my graffiti within my digital book. I’m not sure exactly what it will say yet but something along the lines of ‘thou shalt not conform’ or the wall will say ‘you will conform’ and the character will spray paint ‘not’ in the middle in scruffy red writing to make it stand out, taking inspiration from the above examples you can see that Banksy has produced, putting out the message of not conforming within my idea.
I think producing my outcomes will be challenging because I have to look at the aspects of illustrating as well as the aspects of composition and target audiences and the structure of graffiti, which I’ve just looked at, but I think it will really help me to produce really effective outcomes and push me to my limits and really rebel against myself by pushing my illustrative limits in this project. This research helped my creative direction because I’m now able to include graffiti in my concepts when coming up with compositions for my digital book as well as what I will include in my big final print out and my moving image processes.
Overall, limitations of this will be that I need to get the graffiti hand writing well depicted, but I will push myself to use my techniques I’ve found from this research to do so.
To evaluate, by doing this research I’ve been able to look at what graffiti is, where it came from and how I can use the techniques and processes used to produce graffiti to produce graffiti within my illustrations to the best standard I can when I produce a scene that’s focal point is the graffiti on the wall. I may not even use graffiti in my developments within this project, I may think of a better idea, but because I’ve researched it, it has now sparked ideas within my head that I think will be really effective in showing a narrative and showing I’m rebelling against myself illustrating within my graphic design course.
By doing this research I’ve been able to, carry out personal research from contextual sources,research and respond to sources, showing clear consistent and direction and intention and research informed, independently selected references, showing innovative personal thinking and creative direction.
