Urban Portraiture: Street Art & Graffiti Faces

Dive into our archive dedicated to portraiture in urban art. From realistic depictions to abstract interpretations, we showcase the incredible talent shaping cityscapes. See how artists use walls as canvases to capture the essence of individuals and communities. Explore various styles, from photorealistic graffiti portraits to more abstract street art pieces, and learn about the artists behind the powerful imagery. Discover the stories these portraits tell and the messages they convey about urban life and identity.

Fin DAC, A London Stencil Artist

Two days ago, Urban Art Core published an exclusive sneak peek on London stencil artist Fin DAC’s latest stencil artwork Blackjack, of his fabulous female stencil art series. For those who want to know more about the London-based stencil art master, Abid Khan recently published a nice portrait of Fin as part of his inspirational artists video series, filmed in Fin DAC’s very own studio! It’s about beautifying something rather than destroy it. Cutting stencils is so hard edged and flat, I can’t get the depth, the fading that I want from it, but I still love cutting stencils.. ...

Time-lapsed Moscow City Portrait

If you start loving to watch lime-lapse videos of metropolises from around the world (here Dubai and here New York & Istanbul), there’s no way to stop watching them… Recently I stumbled upon this very time-lapse video of the Russian capital Moscow. Belarusian photographer and film-maker zweizwei created this beauty around four months ago, using different camera bodies and several lenses. It shows Moscow at its best and is in my eyes, one of the best time-lapse city portraits I ever watched! ...

London Street Art: Brick Lane

Street Art Documentary | London’s Brick Lane is something like the epicentre for creativity and young, modern life-style in London. Especially around the old Truman Brewery with its galleries, bars and markets a lot of the otherwise shy London street art can be found. With his upcoming street art documentary “Brick Lane in Art” film-maker Shafiur Rahman wants to sketch a creative portrait of this Europe-wide well-know street and its surrounding area. Therefore he interviewed several more or less famous street artists and other protagonists in in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. ...

City Portrait: London 1940s to 1980

As you know, I’m currently in London and therefore still on the search for some great impressions of that interesting city, I could show you to complete something like an unusual city portrait of London… Today I found round about 1400 scanned diapositive-photos in doveson2008’s “London, England 1940s to 1980” photo-collection on Flickr, which is a massive historically photo-portrait of the UK’s capital! These are mostly undated red-bordered Kodachrome slides (although some have handwritten dates on which are given when present). I’ve always found these to be very colour faithful, despite the odd cyan shadow here and there. They are my favourite type of any slide, with the best having a richness of detail and quality that’s unbeatable, even despite some darkening over fifty-odd years on some of them. (doveson2008) ...

Berlin in Tilt-Shift

It’s always interesting to see the own city from a different view or in a different style, especially when it shows the urban flair and nice details of the local architecture. I already showed you some rather impressing city portraits, like New York in HD or in tilt-shift, Vancouver as a time lapse, Tokyo and Yokohama by night or the street life in London, but today I will show you an fucking awesome tilt-shift video of the sexiest city on earth: Berlin! ...

Pedro Matos: Portrait or Urban Reality?

As you maybe know, Portuguese artist Pedro Matos opened his solo-exhibition called “Reality Show” four days ago in Lisbon. Today he sent in some first photos from the opening evening at Montana Shop & Gallery… In my eyes, Pedro’s style is really mad! I love these dirty backgrounds and the highly detailed portraits in the foreground. It’s a very special combination of quick spray-painting and marker techniques on the one hand and traditional oil and acrylic painting techniques on the other hand. ...

Urban Portraiture: Pabo Art Show

Pabo (…) isn’t the first street artist who represents pop culture icons- but rather for technique. He makes pencil drawing portrays, crowded with signs, with the pale and subtle colours of crayons and of ballpoint pen scratches. Famous ghosts, in absolutely classic style. Jimi Hendrix, baron jacket and maudit neckwear, becomes an alchemist, lighted by acid glares, with strong and tender features like the boys of Caravaggio. Hendrix, in the triptych in which he appears, is flanked by a preacher, Martin Luther King, and a dancer, Cassius Clay. (press release) ...

New York & Istanbul City Portrait

After I wrote the article about this very impressive lime lapse video from the streets of New York in 2008, I got a lot of submissions with links to other more or less great videos about urban impressions. ...

Mode 2 - Nude Urban Art

Despite, or perhaps because of his traditional graffiti background (he is one of the most central figures of European graffiti), the Briton Mode 2 has developed an offshoot style of more traditional portraiture. His recent art installations consist of hand-drawn motives on cardboards. They thematize different themes like friendship, love and sex and often show daring nude scenes from the porn world. Format: What do you make of the media fascination with graffiti in recent years, particularly with some of the work Banksy has produced? ...