Graffiti, Marker & Spray Cans

This graffiti documentary looks just great! Obsession Of Colours documents graffiti artists in Poland’s Tri-City area, which is an urban area consisting of three Polish cities: Gdańsk (where the Streetfiles photo exhibition took place in 2009), Gdynia and Sopot. There isn’t that much info about this new Polish film project right now but I can tell you, the footage is mind-breaking! Including fantastic angles, unusual points of view and great lights, I’m pretty sure Obsession Of Colours will become the next highlight of graffiti documentary and a must to watch for all graffiti enthusiasts and documentarists… ...

65 Graffiti artists from 13 countries got together in 2010 for the 1st Biennial International Graffiti Fine Art exhibition at the MuBE Museum in São Paulo, Brazil. The whole art event was organized by exhibition curator Binho Ribeiro and New York-based graffiti documentarist Jared Levy… In an art world where semantics matter, graffiti artists from around the world wonder what exactly is Graffiti Fine Art. After all, once graffiti leaves the street… is it even graffiti at all? ...

Fine artist Benjamin Laading has a foible especially for large-scale fat-cap paintings. That’s not that unusual - I mean, who doesn’t like a good fat-cap tag? - but the interesting thing about his paintings is the fact that they aren’t done with a spray-can but with markers or brushes! These extraordinary artworks require a massive pre-study of fat-cap-looks (the differing distances between the dots create the special fat-cap fading effects) and a lot of time as everyone can imagine… ...

Virtual Graffiti | In addition to the interesting Wii Spray, there’s another innovative virtual graffiti solution out there which is inspired by drawing, painting, printing and graffiti and tries to translate those techniques into a digital world! Its name: Picturae 2.0! Using a special screen as canvas Picturae allows you to paint using a spray-can shaped multi-functional controller, which is able to imitate spray-can, brush and mouse behavior. Also working with digital stencils is possible what allows creating some nice effects… ...

Graffiti Magazine | Today I first got to know the graffiti mag Sandblast, which “is the first magazine to cover the Middle Eastern graffiti scene in depth.” (Invasian) Including interviews, photos and background-stories, the first issue of the Magazine which will be out in July features graffiti and its protagonists from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Egypt what’s a quite interesting thing with all the riots, protests and revolutions in mind! And also the cover whets my appetite for some more nice shots and Arabic letters on trains and walls! ...

Famous British graffiti artist Ben Eine did it again and stenciled his well-known, brightly colored letter styles on a huge wall in London’s Covent Garden! This new mural is Ben’s try to stirring up a debate with Westminster Council about their zero tolerance policy on graffiti and street art… …two Prets, a Starbucks, a Gap and it’s fucking boring - who the fuck wants that?! (Ben Eine) Again it was Abbie Brandon who filmed him doing his best and talked to him about his work for Amnesty International, the show at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, artists he likes and much more! ...

Graffiti Photography | Alex Fakso is well-known around the world and with good reason part of my top urban art photographers list! Although his astonishing graffiti action photographs have already been featured in the nice “Heavy Metal” book, Fakso recently published a new book called “Fast or Die”! And although this is something like a successor “Fast or Die” focuses not just on the atmosphere of plain graffiti, but also on subways… ...

Graffiti Flags | US-American graffiti artist Saber got a massive popularity push back in 2009 when he created that brilliant graffiti flag video to support the US-American health care reforms by Barack Obama. Afterwards Jeffrey Deitch, the famous director of the controversial MoCA in Los Angeles, decided to support Saber as one of the most representational figures for today’s graffiti and street art movement. Featuring a level of sophisticated detail, including collaging, and the skill you would expect from one of the world’s greatest graffiti writers, these pieces represent an artist at the top of his game. (Arrested Motion) ...

Spray-can Production | You all know how it looks when paint sprays out of a nozzle and what talented people can create with that high pressure technique. But have you ever wondered how a spray-can gets produced? Spray-can producer Montana Cans came up with the idea (the concept is by Ruedi One!) to showcase some details of their entire spray-can production line, which gives us the possibility to get to know how the paint comes into the cans… ...

Indoor Graffiti | Although I prefer graffiti created without permission, often the results of commissioned artworks are just awesome, as a lot of skilled writers (like MadC!) showed in the last years! The latest dope stuff I stumbled upon are the fantastic graffiti toilets by Deck2. Somebody awarded him a contract to redesign some toilets (for gents and ladies) and, although I have a foible for all the drippy tagged toilets (which can be found all over the world), I have to say that he did a good job! I can imagine that after having some beer and gatecrashing into these graffiti toilets you are totally flashed for some moments… ...