How about a little bit of graffiti history?
This information could be a little bit boring for you but if you want to be a good graffiti artist, it is important to know some of the graffiti history and how it has evolved over the passing years.
Let’s start from the very beginning for Our Graffiti History.
It is not a mystery that previous civilizations (we are talking about 200,000 years ago) took advantage of their surroundings. In this case, the only available surface to translate ideas were the cave wall. This was a smart way to embed important events on these civilizations. In these early stages, the only objects available to print ideas were sharp rock.
Between 1927 and 1949, modern man evolves and immediately start making elements to improve and facilitate people’s life. In this case, in 1927 engineer Erik Rotheim, patents the first aerosol spray can but it wasn’t until 1949 that, Edward Seymor had the great idea of using the engineering behind the spray can and though of putting pain in it. Pretty straight forward.
1960: CornBread and Cool Earl Rise
Continuing with graffiti history, In the early 60’s, controversial people such as CORNBREAD and COOL EARL started writing on the city walls to attract peoples’ attention or a specific person. This trend starts to spread to New York and other interesting writers begin to tag their aliases with their street number such as JULIO 204, CAY161 and TAKI 183. TOP CAT 126 moves to Philadelphia and inspires locals.
1971: Subways and Trains
In 1971 to 1972, artist start adding important components to the graffiti such as dots, clouds and stars. Tags start to spread like a virus. Writers decided to go one step ahead and use the subway trains as a canvas.
It was not long after that they had to jump onto building roofs as they were an easy target for the police when tagging trains. Their ideas started to be more noticeable and unique in the general public and the media.
Final Words
Graffiti history is very complex in terms of what events really mark the industry and what event were never brought to light. Contemporary artist are now evolving and are seeing the outside world as a way to express, to a discordant society, the reality of the world and how we can change it.
Now, its time to learn how to draw graffiti letters here.
To learn a bit more about graffiti, check out the World’s Top 20 Most Famous Graffiti Artists.
