Do you know what graffiti is?

To get acquainted with this kind of modern visual art you can practically in any city. Painted walls of houses, fences, sheds will help you with this. And if you immediately categorically do not reject this way of self-expression of young people, and carefully look at the drawings, you can be sure that everything looks very nice.

From antiquity to modernity

The history of graffiti begins in the distant past. After all, our ancestors also made drawings and inscriptions, only mostly on rocks. And the word "graffiti" in Italian means "scratch".

Modern graffiti originated in the 70s of the 20th century among teenagers and was considered the art of the street. The first graffiti drawings were made in the subway of New York. In the same place, the first rider appeared who placed his signature and the number of the quarter in which he lived: "Taki 183". By the way, writers are artists who draw in graffiti style. After Taki 183, teenagers appeared in poor neighborhoods of New York, who started drawing on city walls, in porches, garbage cans. They invented their own nicknames and wrote them in an incomprehensible font.

In Russia, graffiti appeared in the 90s. By the way, together with breakdance. After all, it's all parts of hip-hop. The writers did not just draw on walls and fences, they did hip-hop festivals, where they showed their art.

What is graffiti?

This is one of the directions of street art. The latter, by the way, is called street art and has a voluminous list of different species.

In different countries around the world, street art is not the same. In France, for example, this art form is legalized. On the Scandinavian Peninsula, directly from train cars, you can see a lot of drawings made in different styles of street art. In Russia, drawing graffiti in public places is a criminal offense punishable by a fine or even imprisonment.

But this is in public places, and there are vacant lots, abandoned construction sites, deadlocked alleys. In addition, sometimes the construction companies themselves are invited to paint fences around the construction sites, and tenants of high-rise buildings give artists graffiti freedom of action in yards and entrances. And there are days of graffiti festivals and other festivals, various exhibitions of writers that give an opportunity to show the art of graffiti in all its glory in public places.

So, what is graffiti? To be precise, it's just graffiti using a three-dimensional image of the letters of the alphabet. But graffiti is constantly evolving. Old ones are being improved and new original styles of letters are being invented, balloons with paint are being modernized. Full text drawings were added to the inscriptions. Now some artists with the help of paint cans create real works of art.

Graffiti: how to learn to draw

Artists with experience are advised to start with writing their nickname, then it is worth experimenting with the "third" dimension, to make the signature volumetric. You can safely add arrows, bubbles, mix paints from different cans. The incomprehensibility and intricacy of the drawing will attract more attention to it, and you will be helped to feel what graffiti is.

And still the best advice for those who begin to deal with graffiti - first use not a can, but a pencil. Draw houses on sheets of paper, drawing some drawings or inventing your own characters.

When you are satisfied with the result of drawing on paper, think about creating a sketch of the drawing, which you then transfer to the wall.

Over time, you will learn how to make graffiti stencils, use the technique of shadows and bright colors, find out why markers, airbrushes and capes are needed, what paint is better to buy and why you should not paint in windy weather. Only knowing all these subtleties, you can clearly understand what graffiti is.

Culture of graffiti

It turns out that there is such a concept. It includes two main rules. First, the rider never spoils really good buildings. He can create only where it really is necessary to revive the gloomy and fresh landscape of the industrial zone or abandoned wastelands, backyards.

Secondly, the rider never paints the drawings of other writers, otherwise it will incur the disgrace and dislike of his colleagues.