Fixing Your Graffiti: Easy Ways to Improve Your Throw-Ups and Pieces
Graffiti is one of the most expressive art forms, where personal style and technique combine to create something visually unique, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the basics and throw caution to the wind. In today’s video offering constructive critiques and suggestions for improvement so lets get right into things with our first submission from Koy!
Top Graffiti Tags: Best Handstyles
1. Koy
Koy had a really cool piece with a nice old school aesthetic that he absolutely nailed! That being said, the letter weight is something I’d like to help Koy with a little. Looking at the piece, he has a nice size K, but it’s weight pales in comparison to the weight of the Y. Both letters are naturally heavy letters with tons of weight, so there isn’t any reason the K should be much lighter than the Y. One of the reasons the Y has so much weight is because of the massive arms on the letter, and the fact that it’s leaning over so far to the right.
To fix this, I bulked up some parts of the K and adjusted the height of certain sections like the stem. We’re also going to kick the leg of the K further down to help it bulk up and become more comparable to the Y. Now we’re going to do something that might seem backward; to lessen the weight of the Y we’re going to thicken the stem. However, at the same time, we’re going to thin down the arms just a little. Think of this as redistributing the weight of the Y rather than straight up getting rid of weight. We’re repurposing the weight to an area with far more stability so the Y doesn’t get as affected by the hard right lean, meaning, less weight for the Y. As for Koy’s rating, we went with a 5 or 6. Over all great piece with great ideas, just some iffy fundamentals and slightly unrefined execution holds the piece back.
2. Erska
Erska shared an amazing mural with us, where he painted a piece surrounded by zombies! He really did a phonominal job here and if I had to rate this, I’d give it a solid 9-10! One thing that stuck out to me though was the legative space. In some areas his letters (like the bottom of his S) looked squished in. In other areas like some open and closed counters, he didn’t leave much room for depth, 3D, clear line work, or negative space. This can make an image harder to make out, and make things needlessly clustered. To help fix this, we thinned down some of the structures to add more negative space. This added area lets builds structure by letter the letter breath a little more, and gives our eyes room to differentiate the difference between positive and negative space.
3.Obino
Obino shares one of his first throwies with us to see how we might help him, and I have to be honest, I love seeing this! My first throwie was 100% garbage, a 0 out of 10 on a good day, and Obino’s is certainly better than my first throwie. For that reason I’d like to give him a 2 out of 10, certainly not bad for a new writer’s throwie. So how can we help Obino? One of the first things I notice is the unrefined shapes. Clean shapes are essential to clean letters, so that’s going to be one of the first things we address here. I also notice a slightly messy baseline. Our base line is responsible for unifying our letters and making them not only feel grounded but also makes them feel more proportioned with one another. Over all I want to keep the letters exactly the same if I can, only refining structures and shapes, but possibly the biggest change will come with the N. We’re going to have to normalize its shapes to be more uniform with the other letters to keep flow. As a result, we’ll completely change it’s structure to flow more with the other letters.
4. Depo
Depo is a writer that gets up around my area here in Philly, and he’s got some amazing work! I love how Depo does not only his throwies, but his Philly tags as well! That said, Depo is a hard-core writer, and normally when you have someone like this, as they’re developing their pieces, their letters will often have features of throwies. Now I like what Depo has here, in fact, I’d give it a good 7-10, but I don’t want to change too much in the drawover if I can help it. We’re going to help him into the realm of pieces by turning his throwie D into a proper straight letter. From there, we’re going to connect the top of the E to the rest of the body for the letter to develop more of its structure. Lastly, we’re going to get rid of the negative space between the O and it’s extension to prevent that space from looking like a counter, and we’ll keep the O predominantly the same after that.
Skofe is the definition of go big or go home with tags. He doesn’t just tag a wall and call it a day, he takes up the whole wall if he can, and he does it in style to make a statement! His massive tags are brimming with style, and clean fundamentals and normally as tags get bigger they become harder to control. You need to enlist more of your body into the act of spraying when going this large and that’s a muscle memory many have no need to build for their tag. Skofe does a great job all around and his work speaks for itself.
