Splatter

Ada Basar & Merlin Gjoka

Splatter “The City of Design”, Unesco, 2006 “The Mecca of Graffiti”

About Berlin, the very first thing that comes to mind is freedom of expression. The diciplines to reflect this expressive soul are placed on the streets. Graffiti and Street Art takes huge amount of interest from tourists all around the world. Only problem is that graffiti and most street art techniques are illegal in Berlin.

Street Art For most of the people, graffiti and street art may look similar but there is a huge difference. Street Art tends to be legal and uses artistic figures. It uses a visual language that aims to be appreciated and get an emotional response from an audience as wide as possible. Street art also includes text sometimes to convey a message, however it does not use tags as a piece of work. Artists uses tags, names or symbols as a signature. Street Art is not just about paintings on the wall, there are many techniques which you can find on the next page.

Graffiti The art form founded in the 70s in New York. At the beginning it was just words that taggers put on public spaces. Then it meant something special, it became a way to say “... was here”. It was a way of communication with the other taggers using public areas. Tagging a train then come back to a response after, got bigger and tags became throw-ups on train wagons. It travels the city everyday and all citizens notice those throwups. Compared to street art, most graffiti works are made illegally. Public transportation in Berlin strictly forbids graffiti. In general, artists consist of letters and tags, usually in bubble letters. Graffiti artists don’t usually tend to care whether their work is appreciated from the masses, considered their targets tend to be other graffiti artists. 56

Techniques

Spray Painting: Stickers:

You need to sketch first, on These are mostly small sized paper or on the wall. It depends and printed on a sticky on your choice. If you drew paper. This is the fastest your lines to the wall, fill inside technique on applying. the lines. You can draw doo- Print your work and stick it! dles and take a picture of it, put what you want to draw on

Stencil:

This technique is one of the fastest when it comes to doing it on the wall but you need to prepare first. Draw what you want to draw on paper or do it in software and print it. It will be easier to apply if it’s a thick paper or a metal sheet is even better! Cut the inside of the painting but be careful, you don’t want to cut out the parts that you don’t want to paint. Make them connected to the sheet with lines. Then all you need to do is place it on a wall and spray paint. You can use layers to give it shadows. the wall on it digitally. Now you Liquid Paintings: have a more accurate sketch You are going to need brushes and way more faster. Now it is for this one and paint of all yours to paint. course. There are kinds of liquid paints but it’s better to Poster: We don’t want to use oil This technique is fast on apply- paint and wait for days for it to ing and you have time as dry. Yet you can still use it. long as you want it to be. Same Acrylic dries much more faster as stencil. Draw or design than oil paint and it is your poster at home and paste cheaper. The process can be it wherever you want. same as the spray painting.

use the one which dries faster.

Cut-Out:

This is almost same as sticker but it needs more time to find where you want to stick it. It would be better to pick a spot first than design something specifically for that spot. Usually human and animal figures are used and purpose of it is to give an illusion effect.