Introduction
Ever since first seeing graffiti in San Francisco as a child I have had a magnetic attraction to it. There is just something I love about tags. I could stare at them for hours. Perhaps it’s the intense amount of visual stimulation from all the colors and interesting patterns. This project was for my Color Theory Art-14 class. The professor assigned a project to sand blast a bottle and recreate an existing painting on the surface. The goal was to demonstrate your perception of the colors the artist originally intended and furthermore your ability to recreate them by mixing paint.

The Project
The rest of the class spent their time with fancy wine bottles trying to recreate a master piece. Surely there is reward in saying you were able to paint a Picasso on a wine bottle. But if the whole class also can, that waters down the worth in my opinion.

Instead, I came up with an idea the professor had never seen the entire time teaching the class and assigning this project!

I decided to copy graffiti. Graffiti is very colorful so there would be no problem showing my ability to replicate colors. But moreover it is complex in a different kind of way than fine art. Painting a portrait involves smooth range of tones for the skin, hair, clothes and background.

There are very few contrasting edges. Graffiti on the other hand has lots of sharp angles contrasting edges. I also decided to paint it on a 40 ounce malt liquor bottle. I felt this would be analogous to the underground culture behind street art. No fancy-pants wine bottles here. Just a $3.00 bottle and a tag that’s probably been painted over by now.

I have the book Graffiti World, so I browsed through it and decided upon a Cope 2 tag, for no other reason than my aesthetic attraction to it.

The Original
I used to have a better pic but I couldn’t locate it =/

The Outcome:
Sorry for the lack of quality in the pictures, haven’t had the time to snap it with a decent camera.
The colors are also off due to the camera.

November 22, 2012 at 1:13 am | Art