5 Mistakes Made On Graffiti Pieces!
When you’re out there painting your piece on a wall, there’s a million different things to pay attention to, and with all that, who could blame you for a mess up or two? In today’s post, we’re chatting about 5 different, common mistakes that people make when doing their pieces. You can check out the video on YouTube here, "5 Graffiti Piecing Mistakes People Make”, or you can watch it above.
Painting Too Large or Small - #5
One of the most prevalent mistakes graffiti artists make when starting out, is painting pieces that are either too large or too small for the wall. Either extreme can harm your letters, or the look of the piece over all.
Overly Large Pieces: You risk running out of room, leading to incomplete letters or parts of your artwork being cut off. In some cases, especially with more experienced writers, your piece will still look just fine, however, this can often bog down an otherwise great piece. Strangely enough, having letters cut off is often a better alternative to scrunching the last letter or two after making the beginning of the name too big.
Too Small Pieces: Failing to fully utilize the available space can result in a piece that looks insignificant and doesn’t make the intended impact. In the streets this means that in some cases a throwie can actually get more attention than your piece. In more hidden DL spots, it means people will likely go over you since it will be easy to cover your work, and your work isn’t too impactful anyway, so it’s not much of a loss.
To practice scaling your work, and adaptability try to design pieces for specific walls. This helps you gain an understanding of composition. Artists who frequently paint in diverse locations tend to excel at adjusting their work to fit various spaces.
Not Enough Spray Paint! - #4
Another common pitfall is starting a piece without enough paint. This mistake can derail your work, leaving you scrambling for colors and possibly compromising the quality of your piece. To avoid this:
Plan Ahead: Ensure you have all the necessary colors and enough paint for both outlines and fill.
Backup Supplies: If you’re unfamiliar with how much paint a piece normally takes you, then bring one more can just in case.
In graffiti there is little that’s worse than forgetting paint and asking someone at the wall to spot you a can. Sure, from time to time, we all forget to bring enough paint and it comes back to bite us, but there’s something to be said about people who always ask for more paint at the wall. This just shows bad planning, or it shows they can be a freeloader. Now I’ll be honest, I made this mistake once before when I asked my partner in graffiti to donate a can to the Grim Foundation and he was not happy about it haha. It was my first ever legal wall, and I wanted to do a bit extra, but I didn’t have the paint for it, so I hadn’t planned for this. I still remember the can as well, it was a nitro 2-g black MTN, full, never used, until I got my hands on it. I used every drop of paint in that thing, the whole can, he never got a single spray out of it. Luckily we had more so he still had enough for his piece. He never let me live this down, and I thank him for that because it was the first and last time I ever asked for paint at a wall. One of my fondest memories to be sure.
Forgetting Details - #3
Image does not depict forgotten details.
Forgetting crucial details in your graffiti can significantly impact the overall look of your piece. Commonly missed elements include:
3D Effects
Drop Shadows
Extensions and Interior Details
Highlights
Exterior Details
Now if you paint enough pieces on walls, you’re almost sure to be guilty of this mistake. I know I’ve certainly done this on more than one occasion. When painting at this scale, it can be easy to forget a tiny detail from time to time, especially the less important the detail is. More important details such as 3D, can be easy to spot when you forget to add them in, but smaller details like an interior detail are easily missed. At the end of your paint session, take a step back and do a mental checklist. Go down this checklist and make sure all your details and features are painted.
Bad Pespective - #2
Achieving accurate one-point perspective can be easy on paper, but on large walls and murals, this simple technique becomes much harder. Mistakes here can make your piece look amateurish if your perspective is too far off. A slight deviation is no issue when doing a wall given the large scale of the wall, but how can we improve if we find ourselves making this mistake?
Practice: Regularly practice in sketchbooks and small-scale projects to master perspective.
Use Tools: tape or projectors for precise lines.
After nearly 20 years of teaching, and over 20 years in graffiti, I’ve noticed most writers (even experienced ones) don’t know one-point perspective. We aren’t just talking about simple mistakes here either, we mean they don’t understand that fundamental to any level. If you’d like to learn how to do one point perspective properly then check out our video here . We even wrote a chapter in one of our books about this very topic if you’d like a deep dive into the topic with our Beginners Bundle. Once you know how this fundamental works then even if your lines deviate slightly, you’ll still achieve a convincing perspective. The issue really comes in when you don’t know the technique and your lines begin to deviate in totally different directions. This will make your piece look horrible, and you won’t achieve a convincing perspective at all.
Covering The Piece Whole - #1
Not fully covering the previous graffiti when painting over it can lead to conflicts to prevent issues try this:
Buff Paint: Roll the entire wall with buff paint to cover the existing work completely.
Thorough Coverage: Ensure your new piece covers any remnants of the previous work, either with the letters or exterior details like bubbles.
These are both good ways to make sure you’re covering the piece entirely. Be warned though, graffiti artists are drama queens and even when you do everything right, they might still throw a fit. Sometimes these more sensitive types can be helped, but do your part and try to respect the people you’re going over by covering their work completely.
If you’re looking to learn the basics of graffiti then check out our brand new book The Ultimate Graffiti Guide Book Part 1-Fundamentals where you’ll learn all of graffiti’s basics in an easy-to-follow book. By the end of it you’ll fully understand how to find your style, and how to keep progressing for the rest of your graffiti journey.
