5 Things Graffiti Toys Do Wrong!
Toys in graffiti tend to stumble along in their early days and some of these mistakes can be pretty costly, while others are a lot more innocent. Today, our new video on YouTube, "5 Things Only Toys Do” , we go over a few of these while explaining them a bit more.
Crowns - #5
If graffiti can be summed up in one word, many would say “ego”! Graffiti is all about getting your name up on walls as much as possible and gaining as much recognition as you can for that name. The more you get up, the more people know you, and if you get up enough, then others in graffiti might recognize you as a king! Now there’s an issue, and that’s ego. Many new writers, even old writers too, will put in minimal effort, or they’ll put in a bit of work for a few years and they’ll start putting a crown on their work feeling as if they’ve deserved the title although no one reputable gave them the title. This entitlement comes from boosting their ego and making a self-proclaimed move to see who if anyone will contest them. Doing something like this is hard as a toy because your skill doesn’t match the title so it’s easy for people to call out. However, when more experienced writers do this, most newer writers in the area will stay quiet and not refute the claim, some of equal experience may call the self-proclaimed king out. Now to be clear, there is an element of this where new artists simply don’t know the crown means something and they just like how it looks, that’s understandable. At the end of the day, the title of king is just that, a title, and it takes years of consistent good work to achieve. Not to mention it can only be achieved by writers, not just any graffiti artist.
Rules of Graffiti - #4
Graffiti artists have a few simple rules they follow, a code of ethics if you will. To break it down simply, here is a short summarized list.
Don’t tag places of worship
Don’t tag cemeteries
Don’t tag people’s personal belongings (cars, fences, garage doors, anything of the sort).
Dont go over graffiti that’s been up for 10+ years
Dont go over RIP graffiti
Follow the hierarchy of graffiti
Hierarchy of graffiti - Tags don’t go over anything, Throwies go over tags, pieces go over throwies.
That’s the basic idea of the unspoken rules of graffiti, some people get into more granular details but if you follow this list you’ll be fine. New graffiti artists don’t follow this list at all, they typically tag people’s home fences and garage doors, or they ignore the hierarchy entirely and all of these are a problem! While re never recommend breaking the law, if you are going to do graffiti then at least show the art form some respect.
Too Much Style - #3
Adding too much style is something we’ve talked a lot about here on the blogs, and in the videos but this point can never be stated enough. Adding style to your practice does not at all help you, and in fact, it keeps you from progressing! To be clear, no amature in any artform has style, style is the result of expressing your skill and knowledge of the fundamentals which an amateur has little to none of otherwise they wouldn’t be an amateur. To learn, you need to study and practice the fundamentals, without adding style to it so that you can actually practice those basics. Normally, new graffiti artists add style to all of their work, and they do this for decades, to the point where 20, 30, 40 years into graffiti they’ve never practiced a day in their life. This is true of almost every graffiti artist in existence and it’s why its takes most graffiti artists so long to progress.
Wasting Spots - #2
Wasting spots isn’t much of a problem and it’s normally not one that sticks around very long. After all, it’s understandable when you first start your adrenalin starts to go into overdrive with every tag, you’re nervous and paranoid, and you’re hyper-aware. With that in mind, when you go to tag, you rush your tag, you don’t think about what it is you’re doing, and in a desperate attempt to hide what you’re doing while also speeding things up you shrink the letters. By the time you’re done, you walk about with a tiny tag no one will see and you’ve all but wasted the wall. Now a better writer, with more experience will take the wall from you and even if they don’t follow the hierarchy when they do, you’re almost thanking them for covering your work because you regret how it looked to begin with. However, as you progress and as you get more experience you open up and stop trying to cut corners when tagging. This allows you to take advantage of a good spot and make the most of it.
Getting into Beef- #1
Beef and graffiti almost go hand and hand, which is weird when you consider that respect is at the center of all of graffiti’s rules. However, because this whole community is based on ego, it’s no surprise that someone’s feelings are going to get hurt, and when they do, they take it out on the walls (hopefully). Toys in graffiti tend to accidentally go over other people’s work without realizing what they’ve done. Sometimes they actually set out specifically to go over other people as a cheap attempt at recognition. Regardless of the reasoning, beefs are always childish and they’re never worth the effort. Its really that cut dry and simple and this is even more so the case with online beef.
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.
