Graffiti Lesson 2 - On Location - The Outline

Our graffiti artist arrives on location and begins work.

Filmed on a legal wall underneath the M4 in West London.

The Origins of Graffiti.

What does graffiti mean to you? Most people see it as something
that emerged only in modern society, scribbled by urban youth on
railway bridges. However, its use can be traced back to ancient
civilisations. One can even say that graffiti or writing, as it is
more commonly known, dates back to the origins of mankind itself,
when Neanderthal man's sense of his environment was expressed
through cave drawings.

More often than not graffiti has been characterised as vandalism
due to its associations with the spray-painted drawings you often
see plastered over buildings and walls in cities.

Graffiti can be categorised in three common art forms: Tags,
Pieces and Labels. All of us have walked down a street and seen
various walls covered with graffiti, but can we differentiate one
item of graffiti from another? The most common and the easiest to
recognise is a tag.

A tag is usually a simple one-coloured design (though it can be
more complex). Put simply, it is a depiction of a writer or
artist's nickname or message, and its aim is to send a message to
other writers.

A piece or masterpiece is a more complex form of graffiti where
a writer usually starts with some kind of pre-conceived plan or
sketch. A piece tends to take graffiti more in the direction of
character art, which has a big fanbase. People will often be able
to distinguish a writer's work by their character designs alone.
Artists like D*Face, Insa, Sickboy and Inkie can all be recognised
by the characters or symbols in their pieces.

A label is when a writer's tag or character design is printed on
posters or stickers. Labels can be found in most cities around the
world. This can be a great way for all kinds of artists to promote
their art far and wide; usually tags are quite hard to see and they
are only going to draw the attention of people interested in street
art. You often see labels plastered on the back of street signs,
lampposts, and anywhere with a smooth surface that can have
something stuck to it.

Although graffiti seems to have been part of the mainstream for
ages, it was not until the 1970s that graffiti reinvented itself
with a more modern term named writing, which first took root in the
United States and later spread across the water to Europe.

The last decade has seen writing really take hold of the global
art scene with celebrities emerging from the hub of Graff artists
around the world. It is only now that you hear about graffiti
events like Secret Wars and people like American actress Angelina
Jolie forking out £100,000 for an original piece by the notorious
Bristol-born artist Banksy.

Graffiti is the new cool, with hundreds of companies in the last
few years jumping on the street art bandwagon. Graffiti is no
longer just a shunned art form, yet it still manages to stay true
to its origins by remaining accessible to the younger generation.
Graffiti it seems is here to stay.