There are several things that you should try in your life and if you are fond of art and design, graffiti-painting is defenately one of them. Now we can claim with a full responsibility, that this is a laborious, difficult but very exciting experience. Have a look how we have spent our Saturday, transforming the wall of a gymnastics center in Tilburg into a matrerpiece of street art.
The graffiti-creation was announced as a part of volunteer activity of
NLDOET taking place on March 17th all over the Netherlands. Some were planting trees, some creating fancy road signs some (like us) were giving new life to old buildings (so unlike most of graffiti paintings this one was legal). The organisators of the event invited
Jord Jansen a Dutch illustrator, artist, musician and graffiti painter to lead the project and to teach several volunteers the basics of street art.
Dutch "early birds" gathers 9.30 at the spot. A little bit familliar with Dutch culture I expected to start the work right away at 9.31. The first nice unexpected turn for me, as a lazy russian, was a cup of freshly made coffee in a company of future artists offered by the hosts. Few people were still late (they of course were internationals), so I was the only one non-dutch in a "gezellig" company trying to understand first advice and instructions given by Jord. After few cups of coffee we got a small excursion over the sport center, met a group of children sitting in splits, having their training. Apparently they entered the building with grey old walls in the morning and now they were looking at us, the strangers in old durty clothes as at homeless or beggars having no idea that in few hours their school will change it's appearence.
Well, finally it's time to start... I should say of course that the graffiti you ussualy see in the slums are made at night by one or two people so the experience we got is apparently not the same, but still facinating! Sunny Saturday morning, music playing outside, 15 people shaking the canns with paint (you should shake them at least 2 minutes before painting to make the paint inside homogenious and liquid). There are metal bolls in the cannes which help to shake the paint and the more you shake the louder is the sound they make. There were three boxes of painting sprays. There are two of them:
There is the first advice for you: if you are going to paint graffiti you might need some gloves othervise you hands will look at least like that or more likely even worse. Took me half an hour to remove the paint with acetone.
The future graffiti consept was designed few days before. It was decided that there will be a graffiti writing - the name of the sport center "Kunst&Kracht" which means "Art&Power" and figures of gymnasts on both sides of the writing. The figures were designed beforehand. On the night before painting, Jord with few helpers took the beamer outside, projected the pictures of gymnasts on the wall and copied them with a black marker on the wall.
The font of the writing was designs beforehand as well, however only the frame and the coloures were decided. As for the detailes we were improvisign and creating during the process as real artists as you will see later. Jord started making thin lines of the figures with a spray paint leting us to fiil in the figures. Later we'll realise how hard is it to keep the lines thin and neat.
That's what came out in the end:
We'll remove those strange "FDG" in the very end by making a flag with our names.
There was also made some graffiti before us, so we decided to to fit into the composition and to murge our figures with the exsisting painting by continuing the waves . That's what we got:
After the figures were ready we moved to the writing. There was no marker frame to follow, so jord just started paint the lines from nowhere looking at the printed letters from time to time.
When the aproximate frame with a white paint was ready it was time to make the lines with actual colours.
The whole palette from bloody red to banana yellow was chosen for the writing.
Every next letter was one tone lighter than the previouse one in word Kunts, "&" was the lightest yellow and the Kracht was again from yellow to bloody red every next character one tone darker.
After that we started making the fancy background for the writing which looked alike paisley pattern.
It first seemed that this will ruin our perfect writing, but in the end of course it made it much more impressive!
The third layer of paisleywas painted already without the frame. We were improvising like real artists. Being scared to ruin everything at first, just few minutes later we were freely creating new and new curves making it arty. That's what we got at that stage.
Some cracks effect with red paint inside the letters:
Finally it is time delineate the letters with black paint...
and with light green outside also... and some shadow inside as well :) So three time contour, signature and final picture.
To celebrate our awesome team-work we had lunch outdoors, discussing future paintings on nearby fence and made the final touch: the flag with the creators names.
Cheking the names with the list not to foget anyone:
Date and our blog name and it's finished!
The whole crew:
Tired but happy we can go home being proud of our powerful art.
Special thanks to Jord Jansen and to
Sasha, one of the authors of the blog and resistant photographer.
PS: the day after when I found my right arm aching becouse of several hours of constant painting, I realised how hard is that kind of art :)
PPS: you are more than welcome to share you own experience or just your mood in the comments.
And if you have any questions left, feel free to ask! We'll be happy to tell more about our experience and process details.
