What on earth is Wildstyle graffiti?

How to draw Wildstyle graffiti is a question most difficult to answer perhaps the name gives us some indication as to it’s demeanor, the character of Wildstyle is that of being a secret message of the street but more so a message of the artist.

Each reputable artist has their own nuances distinct from each other.

Take your name/handle or what ever you care to call it but take as far as it can go and just that little bit more because you can. Arrows play a major role in all graffiti styles because they point and without trying to be smart that is the point. Graffiti is an extreme form of forced advertising a counter force rebellion against conformity and control from the media giants, the masters of a brainwash plan, conform or be executed for resistance.

Our social masters do not want us to be free and scream anarchy if we try to push the envelope beyond the norm, conform, you must conform saying it’s rubbish because we can’t read it as if it was ever meant to be read. Words and letters are deformed beyond recognition into the secret language known as Wildstyle stretched and misconstrued into the words of an anti social song, I am me, have it.

The media moguls conspire in secret but the Wildstyle writer secretly stands alone like a warrior on the edge of time forcing his message on an unsuspecting world, I am me, have it.

Long live the king the king is dead.

Above is a quick example of how to draw Wildstyle graffiti with heavy play on arrows and black outline, I am sure you could do better so please do if you want to write Wildstyle.

Study other writers in the same way old school fine artists study the masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt to name only a few, this preparatory work informs your further development. Copy the Wildstyles of other writers in order to understand them, this will enable you to mix and match when drafting your own secret codes of resistance and form your own style.

Always start out with basic everyday readable letters then keep working them into oblivion, distorting them into the unrecognizable entangled mass’s known as Wildstyle, then do it all over again because you can. It pays to revel in your obsession I do digress for reason because that is how to draw Wildstyle graffiti by getting way off the subject but keeping the tiniest thread of whence it came.

• They are painted in strong vibrant colors that often clash.

• They are intended to be attention grabbing.

• They are often emotive concepts that question the norm.

• They often contain 3D lettering.

• They often contain lettering that overlaps.

The heavy bold 3D lettering is very apparent in the majority of graffiti art images and is usually the starting point for most potential artists as it most often starts with your name, tag or handle. Many of the same distinctive bold style lettering's used in advertising to create impact are also used by the graffiti artist so are a good place to look for ideas. It most often reflects and resembles the branding or advertising art world in many ways but chiefly as a counter alternative, usually with a strong social political massage that the artist is passionate about.

• The pictures or pieces of work themselves will contain sharp hard hitting  contrasts.

• They will be painted in stark vivid colors.

• They will be well defined with strong shadows and outlines.

The best way to start your piece of graffiti art is by drawing smaller ideas and outlines that you can later scale up to any size, this will help you to understand the problems you might face when attempting to create something bigger. Scaling your ideas is a simple task once you have a smaller drawing or painting to work from. There is an endless supply of ideas online if you need them for fonts to use in your graffiti as well as examples of graffiti created by others to feast your eyes upon and incorporate into your own work.

The tools to use for your designs or ideas are pencils, felt tipped or marker pens and fine line drawing pens all of these come in a very wide range of distinctive and vivid colors that make them an ideal choice for graffiti artists.  If you need ideas for a graffiti font to use, there are plenty of sites online that have examples for you to copy.

Outlines can be created with a graphite pencil and or any permanent black ink pen but fine line and wide chisel or bullet tipped markers are a preferred choice of many. Shading around the letters you've outlined with a range of different colors will enhance the 3D effects of your lettering to make it more distinctive.

Make your own graffiti art because it is really easy if you use these methods and it is not as difficult as you might think.

Yes I know that there are many who would not consider this graffiti but I say "make money not trouble".

When you are ready to paint your outline drawings and ideas onto canvases or bigger surfaces you can use the grid reference method by marking out a grid over the top of the drawing you want to enlarge. You then recreate this grid onto the area you want to redraw your original drawing and then use it to measure where everything goes by comparing grids. Very large areas can be marked out with string by impregnating it with chalk or charcoal by simply rubbing it into the fibers, when the string is in this condition you stretch it out tightly across the area that you want to mark out. Then you pull it out from the middle and let it go so it then snaps back against the surface of the new drawing area leaving a mark imprinted on to it.

You can then use the chalk or charcoal to redraw the outlines onto your new drawing area. Spray paint the main outlines with a similar color to the background but a couple of shades lighter or darker so it will cover more easily if you need to change anything later, allow this to dry before continuing.

Then you can begin to fill in the details and your areas of color with spray paint in much the same way by starting with the lightest colors first and the largest areas then putting in the details. Finally you can carefully fill out the black outlines with your spray paints adding highlights and finishing touches at the same time, you can even use a brush to do your very fine details. Once again let me say make your own graffiti art because it’s not as difficult as you might think it is really easy if you use these methods and it is not as difficult as you might think.

Everybody and the dog will tell you drawing is about looking and do you know what, all of them are right but do you want to know something else, very few of them actually explain what they mean, do they?

How important is it to understand some basic principles about looking?

I don’t know about you but I see so much I cannot possibly take it all in, we live in a very visually informative world 80% of all the information we receive is visual any way. So we are literally being bombarded with it, saturated with it, we even see things in our sleep or at least we think we do.

But we actually see very little because it doesn’t register we are not really looking we are just seeing, browsing you might say but if you are going to learn to draw then you need to look with reason.

Here are some obvious points that weren’t so obvious to me once upon a time; I used to lie on the bed as a kid and draw but no matter how hard I tried my pictures never looked right.

When I used to draw at the kitchen table they always turned out much better and it was because of the angel I was drawing at if you try to draw at an angle lying down then you will usually end up with a distorted image. If you only look at this image from the angle at which it was drawn it will look more accurate than if you hold it up squarely in front of your eyes to view.

This information is very useful when you look at the fantastic work created by pavement artist’s, Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller these are modern day artist’s who completely turn this whole problem to an advantage, not only do they make this a unique selling point but they also makes it their trade mark.

There is a name for this type of art it is called anamorphic perspective and the earliest examples of this are by Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea Pozzo.

Some examples of this early work can be seen in Andrea Pozzo’s work on the ceilings of the Jesuit, St Ignatius’ Church, Rome, 1685 – 1694, this masterpiece is a fabulous example of illusory perspectives and the dome being of particular importance.

Sant Ignazio ceiling.

Sant Ignazio ceiling further away.

The dome is not real either and from a certain point marked with a brass plate on the floor you find it very difficult to see that it isn’t.

Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these guys do this on the street and also create fabulous examples of illusory perspectives so the question for me is how they do these illusions.

Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner.

Kurt Wenner.

Edgar Muller.

Edgar Müller uses the computer to digitally render the work, concepts, ideas, if you can use computer photo editing software then this is the way to go.

Looking at the way Edgar constructs his drawings shows that he uses what looks like masking tape to get parts of his street paintings accurate it also looks like he takes an approach similar to that used by Julian Beever.

Here are just a couple of ideas I tried after looking at work done by these other guys but mostly I used Edgar Müller for inspiration and I was pleasantly surprised.

Julian Beever explains that he is not a mathematician and has no mathematical skills to speak of; he says that he uses the good old grid method in order to construct his drawings. He also uses a camera on a tripod as a viewer which enables him to use the fixed position of the camera to always be able to identify the exact position to view the street painting accurately.

A statement made by Kurt Wenner that explains how he approaches his work “Artistic geometry was the most fascinating subject” this is mathematics in another name exactly the opposite to Julian Beever.

If I was going to create the illusion above then I would do it like this, first of all I would do a scaled painting on paper of the above image that would be four times bigger than the original image which is A4 so my preparation painting would be A2 in size.

This will give me a greater understanding of how to construct the drawing and mix the colours it will give me a feeling for the picture plus it is a desirable image in it’s own right. This would also give me two images to work from and a more informed understanding of what I would be attempting to create.

I would find the farthest point from my camera tripod, yes I would use a camera because after carrying out some experiments I found it to be very helpful for viewing not just this type of work either, so thanks to Julian Beever.

I also realised that these illusions don’t have the same impact to the naked eye and after reading extensively about these artists I find that they also hint at this.

From the farthest point I would run a tape like Edgar Müller does, to use this as an anchor point for the rest of the picture. Then using identifiable points in the drawing space, environment, with this actually being the street I would construct my drawing outline from reference points identified when doing the preparation painting.

I would construct my outline by marking in key areas, identifying them from my original image and marking them with a chalk stick until I was confident I had enough information to create my painting. I would keep going back to the camera to view the image and check for accuracy I would basically draw it like any other drawing by using reference points from the surrounding landscape to identify reference points in the drawing/painting. This is a necessary continual and ongoing process when doing any kind of drawing but even more so when doing anamorphic perspective you need to be checking and double checking for accuracy just like Julian Beever and others.

A plan showing how elements in the picture can be used to mark out the drawing.

When I draw pictures I often get lost for hours fantasizing and dreaming to myself about all sorts of imaginary ideas, concepts, stories or worlds, people, creatures and places, magic and illusions. This is often the realm of things that don’t exist until you draw them and they are released from the imprisonment of your mined onto an unsuspecting world, it’s amazing when someone looks at your work and says wow.    

Below is an image of Gearman he is an attempt at showing the workings of how an imagination creates illusions from everyday objects something I have done many times when drawing because you can often see things in other things.

Yes I know this is not a creative drawing as such but is it because it is not a photograph either except for the LX mountain bike gears the rest could be considered a digital drawing rather than a pencil drawing but in this format it more easily shows the process of seeing things as other things.

If you draw pictures, any pictures, out of you imagination, from a picture or from life and you look at what you are doing you will start to see other things, this is not likely to happen at first because you will need to build up a stock of past works that is often called a repertoire. This is why it is important to practice by doing drawings all the time but if you like drawing like many people do it will not be a problem and you will soon have a repertoire.

I want to tell you a little story it is a bit of a dark story but a true story all the same and also a good reason for understanding a little bit more about what I am trying to explain.

I had a bit of an obsession from when I was a small child I wanted to be able to draw the human likeness, to be able to draw portraits of real people that looked like them. A large part of my young life had been focused on trying to do this accurately so as others would uphold my observations and confirm that I had the ability to capture the human likeness through drawing. I eventually reached the pinnacle of my success in this by drawing and painting portraits for people, getting paid by them for this work. During this time of about 3 years doing portraits I sold over a hundred of these to their expressed wishes but drew many more in the process that I also sold how many I do not really know but in total a couple of hundred. I was at it all the time but it was causing me other problems I was so over exposed to faces that I began to start seeing them everywhere in everything I looked at. I seen faces in trees, bushes, the drawings I was doing, buildings, everything, it was fun at first but it soon became annoying for me because I felt it was restricting my imagination unless I was drawing faces.

I never wanted to be like that I wanted to be able to draw faces as well as cars, robots, landscapes, mountain bikescapes or what ever but not just faces and I had to stop.

I am glad I did, I don’t just see faces in everything I look at anymore but the only way to do this was to stop and go back to drawing anything but not faces, only when I need them for something else now. 

My new obsession is to be able to draw everything and I am joking because I can do that anyway so that’s what I do, we are all creative artists developing a creative process in every thing we do because that’s what humans do when they focus their attentions on a task this dose not just apply to drawing.

Now take a sheet of paper and write your name or handle on it with a pencil the way you would normally write it and have a look at how you write it. Write it again only this time make it all capitals letters with plenty of space between them now try writing it in as many different ways as you can think of and don’t worry about the end results it is only the start of a process.

Please see my example ideas design sheet below.

As you can see I have used different types of letters, curved ones, square linear type letters, boxed three dimensional letters and some that are hardly readable as letters at all, the more you create the better. If you find yourself stuck after only drawing a few then look for some ideas in the news paper, a comic, magazine or anywhere you might find ideas for lettering.

When you are happy that you have generated enough ideas then you can look over them and pick out one or two that you like for further development it can be as many as you like not just one or two if you like them. Now redraw these out on their own in the center of a clean piece of paper, try to fill the paper as much as you can and make these drawings more accurate correcting or altering anything that needs it as you go. Try to keep your lines faint and not too heavy because they will be harder to cover later.

You can also look online for lettering and graffiti art because there is an abundance of it even videos that show some fantastic work with it all being a great source of ideas and inspiration.

You can create block lettering easy by just redrawing your letters over the top of each other again but out of line like in the example below.
 

You could trace your name or handle and then move it a little to the left or right, up or down and retrace it over the top then fill in the area where you can still see the first letter outline in black to create the illusion of shadow.

You can also overlap letters so the second is hiding slightly behind the first and the third behind the second to create the illusion of one being in front of the other, this overlapping is a very common feature in graffiti art. 

Please see the example below to understand this a little bit more in a visual context.
 

Notice the black shadowing created by moving the letters up and the black outline around all the letter shapes you can also see that the colors have been added any old how but are sill effective because of the well defined black outlines.

Now you can take some of your original ideas and try some of this with them below you will find some of my designs taken from the first sheet of simple pencil drawings.

I have added color and black outlines which is something you should now be trying with your own designs you could try many different combinations of color or black outlines you could even try colored outlines.

Now you can further develop one idea and try it as many different ways as you can think of or combinations or color, see the examples below for further development of ideas.

The tools I use:

Paper or drawing pad A4 printer paper is good and not very expensive but pads are better you can carry them around with you if they are not too big.

Soft graphite pencils preferably mechanical pop a point type pencils, 0.5, 3B.

Fine line permanent ink pens, 0.5 and biros in different colours.

Permanent marker pens the more colours the better.

Water soluble felt tip pens the more colours the better.

Coloured pencils in various colours.

Quarter inch flat brush and water.

learning how to draw graffiti is not difficult or hard and you can get very good very quickly if you put a little effort in to it, honest.
 

The graffiti starting point is the creation of a handle, what is a handle you might ask, it is a name, alias, nickname, code name, tag, moniker and soubriquet yes it is all of these but it is not your real name so the first task for you to do is get a handle.

Graffiti writers have always used false names or handles as they are called but not their real or own name for obvious reasons because graffiti is illegal when done on other people’s property it is considered to be vandalism. I don’t put graffiti on other people’s property but I do have a handle. You don’t have to use a handle you can use your name if you want but in order to get into the whole concept of being a writer then why not give yourself a handle. A handle works really well in all areas of art, writers often write under pen names which are alias’s so why can’t you also have one?   

Get your handle right.

To do this you cou0ld take the first letter of your first name and add other letters to it, for example, Peter could be poP, toP, stoP, floP or you could use your initials, perhaps your initials make a word like LOB, Lindsay Ogden Bradshaw, aim for something attention grabbing like boG if your name starts with the letter G, something off the wall so to speak.

This is where you can be what ever you want like a piG, just a little side note on this: it was discovered that in the burial chamber of an Egyptian emperor there was a statement about him being a fat pig. This is now regarded as graffiti and a form of political expression of it’s time which of course much graffiti is because would you allow yourself to be called a fat pig let alone an Egyptian emperor doing so.

Graffiti on other peoples property is illegal it is a crime punishable with imprisonment in some cases in other cases it has been punishable with death, many young and older people have died in pursuit of this lust for self actualization. I will not tell you that you must not to do it because I do not think people take notice but I will say this much, there is far more to be gained elsewhere without risking your freedom or your life.

Do not take my word for it take a look below.

 
Yes you can make money from doing this especially if you get good at it; the design processes for graffiti are not much different from any other design process that could be graphic design or illustration.

The handle is your own personal graffiti art logo starting point, people get paid lots of money for creating these, examples of this are the Nike tick or the Mc Donald’s M, your aim is to personalize your own unique handle so as to do this you need to get one. My advice when creating a handle is to keep it short about three to four letters like, zit, xon, Lxxx or xxx the possibilities are endless.

So get yourself a handle as the starting point for your graffiti art as an example I decided to use is the name BoG but I wouldn’t use Banksy, it’s too big. Big usually means time and the bigger it is the longer it takes to create, time is money.

Graffiti style art makes money for many artists not just me it has also been the starting point and tool that has enabled many artists to progress so it is not worthless vandalism unless you make it that way by doing it on other peoples property.
  
Now I have got my handle I will show you examples of ways you can learn how to improve your own skills and develop your own designs enabling you to become a graffiti creator
 

If you trace the basic construction of your potential drawing then take the time to fill it in by doing the shading you are actually reducing the work load by at least half but still learning how to draw. This is not to say that you are cheating because you still have to do the shading and although the grunt work of the construction has been done easy you still have to make sure your construction of the shading is accurate. This means that you still have to do important work on your picture or drawing but with less effort. The end results are that you end up learning how to draw better producing very nice drawings that are accurate with only having to put half the work into doing it.

Just in case you need some further reassurance that it is ok to do this then take a good look around for information about how to draw. You will find much reference to using a viewing grid to help you construct your drawing and viewing grids are just a slightly more difficult way to trace pictures. Many artists world wide use viewing grids as their preferred method of doing construction drawings and what they are doing in actual fact is tracing their construction drawings by using a grid instead of using a picture to trace over.

Simple pencil drawings do exist and people do them all the time they just don’t explain how they are done because you never ask.

There are a number of different ways you can do this, one is by keeping your drawing to a minimum.

Perhaps we can call this the minimalist KISS method.

Minimalism is an art form in its own right just in case you didn’t know but in my brain I most often consider that less is more and without getting into any deep philosophy on this I often feel that simple is best.  The process used for all drawing is construction through sequential building blocks with each being a step to the next and so on to completion.

To make drawing easy we need to reduce the amount of steps we take to get there so we can do this in a number of ways. Reduce the drawing down to use a minimum number of marks in order to make the drawing more simple. This can be accomplished by making line drawings and examples of this can be seen in cartoon type drawings, Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse characters are just a couple but there are probably thousands of others meaning that simple is just as legitimate as complicated.    

Another method is tracing because it will reduce the time spent on doing a construction drawing and reduce the drawing to only be made up of lines. This can be a big saving depending on how much you know or understand about it and your ability because somebody who is good at drawing free hand by sight drawing can draw faster than they can trace some drawings. Tracing is also a very good tool for learning to draw and is I consider largely undervalued, under exposed but practiced by many professionals.

The key to drawing easy is to keep it simple, less is more because if you consistently draw in ways that are simple the harder ones get easier as well. 

The meaning to thickness of line should in essence be obvious, it means what it says, how wide or narrow the line actually is has an impact on how our brain relates to that line in context of what is surrounding it and the tonal value of the line also has an impact on what is seen.

If you draw a circle with a wider line along the bottom area it will look like it is the bottom of a sphere and will start to look like a ball shape rather than simply just looking like a circle. This also gives the bottom half of the circle or sphere more weight because the wider line is more substantial so it attracts the eye giving more emphasis and importance this also creates the illusion of light and shadow that is often used to emphasize the under areas of shapes we draw suggesting the shape is three dimensional.  

Please take a look at the drawings of the two circles 1 & 2 below to see an example of what I am trying to explain also take a look at 3 & 4 these lines and circles have been made with a 5 mm, a half cm flat pencil, notice how the line varies in width giving it the look of a twisted ribbon. Number 5 shows how lines can go from a hard definite edge to a more subtle less definite edge that can be used to great effect in your line drawings.  These different types of line can be used to create light and shadow so as to suggest the illusion of form and shape but still maintaining the quality of being a line using this within your line drawing can start to bring your line drawings to life. 

Most people find shading easier and more relaxing than constructional or outline drawing but the problem is you can’t do the shading unless you have done the outline first. This makes drawing difficult for most people and so they never get to enjoy doing the shading because they give up before they have completed the outline and it’s a pity. 

It dose not have to be difficult because you can trace outlines and get them right every time.

People will say that tracings are no good as drawings because they are uninteresting if they are just tracings and boring. I will agree with this but if you are then going to complete the drawing by doing the shading then this is different, very different. For a start you will enjoy it more, you will find it easier, you will find it more relaxing, you will create better drawings, you will not take as long plus you will still learn about construction and proportional representation the easy way. 

If you draw in this way you will also improve in all those more difficult areas of construction drawing that hamper everyone when they try to draw freehand by sight drawing, which is drawing by just looking. The fact is that nobody draws by just looking even sight drawing is just a more difficult way of tracing by measuring, comparing and struggling to get it right, making mistakes and trying to hide them or erasing them making your pictures messy.

Let me tell you a fact, I used to spend hours constructing outline drawings of portraits for people and make a right mess most of the time. Then I used to trace the drawing to get the outline onto a clean drawing area to do my final drawing I had no choice because people want copies of photographs not drawings nowadays they do not want to sit for you either.

So I stopped doing it and traced the outline from the photographs to save myself at least half of work. I was told it was not good to do this but that was what I was doing anyway but taking twice as long. I was told my other drawing skills would diminish and I would become less able to draw without tracing but do you know what it is not true because you enjoy it so much better but still become aware of important learning.

The truth is this I got better, much better because I enjoy it so much more but still became aware of important learning.

Do you know what, you need to do your pencil drawings the easy way first then as you get better develop other ways that improve your sight drawing when you understand it better.