Tutorial: Spray Painting

Last week I had a brilliant time with my AS Graphics students on their typography project having a go spray painting using a two layer technique! It's really simple but the outcome is really effective - this tutorial uses text for the stencil but this could easily work for all sorts of different shapes/objects/drawings! 

Materials needed:

- 2x pieces of card that are the exact same size

- 2 different coloured spray paints

- Cutting Knife

- Cutting Mat 

- Pencil

- 1x piece of card/paper or other surface for spray painting 

Instructions:

1. On your first piece of card sketch out your letters then cut them out using your cutting knife. We used the font blackout for our examples - it's great for stencilling! 

2. Line up your first piece of card with the second piece and trace your letters onto it. Sketch different shapes into the letters then cut out the shapes.

3. With your spray paint, spray through your letter stencil onto your chosen surface

4. Remove your letter stench and line up your shape stencil with your first spray. Select your second colour and spray through your shape stencil - ta da! you've got a two layer spray paint piece!  

As always if you have a go we'd love to see the results, check out the brilliant ones my students did last week... 

- Claire ❤

3W: Olympic Street Art Special

100m Dash - Criminal Chalkist

who: Banksy, Criminal Chalkist, Mau Mau, Edgar Amroyan, Isaac Cordal, Teddy Baden

what: Olympic themed street art

why: because we are loving the Olympics and avidly supporting team GB but we are also in huge support of London's Street Art scene and shocked to learn that many of these pieces have been painted over - especially those featuring the synonymous interlocking rings.

Locog, the Olympic organisers have stated clearly that there are no 'official' guidelines on the removal of graffiti but despite this there has been outrage amongst the Street Art scene that even works on private property with permission to be painted such as Mau Mau's 'the corporate take over of the Olympics' featuring a fat Macdonald's clown with a Coke shaped torch have disappeared. Speaking to the Telegraph Mau Mau said "There's a more widespread clean-up operation than normal, definitely" "There's loads of work disappearing from the tracksides by the railways".

Geoff Whitehouse of Very Nearly Almost a magazine dedicated to Street Art speaking to the BBC says "It's been going on for over a year or more with a general clean-up around Hackney" "This is part of a wider issue where councils proclaim to  zero tolerance policy on graffiti as it is vandalism and deemed illegal, yet will also help protect work by Banksy". Keep Britain Tidy Manager Helen Bingham acknowledges this contradiction "There's a difference between low grade tagging and the work people like Banksy do", she said. "You have to look at it and know the difference - it's not a black and white thing." Clearly then problem then lies with those with an untrained eye being allowed to make the decision about what is or isn't deemed art. 

The location of Banksy's Olympic-themed mural of a Javelin thrower hurling a rocket shown on his website has been kept a secret in fear of removal by the authorities. The Street Artist Darren Cullen who was arrested last week on suspicion of incitement to commit criminal damage and is now banned from all Olympic venues says "I have no idea why the authorities are trying to clean the street up. This is what East London is known for. It is the Mecca, the number one place for street art in the world". And we here at i heart teaching art are inclined to agree. After all there is nothing like stumbling across a clever, well executed piece of street art. These streets are the world stage for such artists in the same way as the stadium is so for the athlete's and we feel it deserve's to be celebrated!

What's your view? Feel free to enter the debate by commenting below.

Tutorial: 3 Colour Stencil

This tutorial is blissfully easy and fabulously simple. What's more is that you can either use your finished artwork as a digital stencil, or print out the layers separately, cut out the coloured sections and spray paint the stencils for a more hand made feel!

equipment Adobe Photoshop, Photograph, Card, Scalpel, Cutting Matt, Spray Mount, Spray Paint

one: Follow this tutorial

two: print out your separate layers three: spray mount onto card four: cut out the coloured area of both of your images very carefully using a sharp scalpel five: find a suitable surface and spray glue the lightest stencil (the one with the most area cut out) onto your surface six: spray with a mid / light  colour (not black or very dark) seven: place your second stencil over your recently sprayed area (leaving it to dry first) and spray in place with spray glue eight: stand back and admire your work!

- Jess ❤

Tutorials: Having a go myself!

One of my favourite things about teaching is the chance to continue practising and updating my own art skills, I love nothing more than spending a bit of time actually having a go myself. For our AS-A2 project with our Photography and Graphics students me and my wonderful colleagues have been busy making and finding new video tutorials and this week I got the chance to have a go! Our new Graphics project is called 'Song of the Summer' so I thought I'd get involved too, I've used some pictures of one of my favourite bands No Doubt for my own experiments... 

There's tons of tutorials out there for stencilling so rather than make our own we followed this amazing one! What we loved about it was that it shows you how to make a stencil effect image in Photoshop and then takes you through printing, cutting and spray painting it as well so you've got handmade and digital all rolled into one! 

We took inspiration from this album cover by Pulp for this tutorial - it shows a few different techniques using the pen tool, clipping masks and creating a brush! The sequins take a while but it's quicker than sewing them by hand! 

We loved the 2009 Grammy's Typographic Posters so we created these two tutorials (here and here). I think this was one of my favourite tutorials to try myself! 

So there you have it! I had real fun making these this week! I hope you enjoy our tutorials too!

- Claire ❤