Graffiti’s first roots began to appear in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the late 60s when a couple of young boys started tagging corn bread and cool earl all over the city until almost every where you looked you would see corn bread and cool earl written in trains walls windows etc. Soon this radical way of expression know as graffiti art caught the community and local press attention. A few year later after the movement of cornbread and cool earl took notice many graffiti artist where slowly appearing in to the streets of Manhattan, but it wasn’t until the year 1971 when the new York times published an article about a young graffiti artist by the name of TAKI 183 a boy who had tagged all over the city capturing every ones attention do to the fact that you would literally see his name tagged across the entire city.

Taki 183 was employed as a foot messenger and was often moving threw out the hole city something he took advantage of by tagging his name every where he would be at walls, trains, windows, cars etc. But even thou he was the first graffiti artist to be recognized for his art he wasn’t the first to start writing in New York there where plenty of others before him. But his fame opened the doors to many other young artist that would start emerging from the streets of New York.

Very soon graffiti art became a way for young kids to express them self’s by tagging there names on walls or trains using anything from paint markers, spray paints, etc slowly graffiti art started moving from the streets on to sub ways and until it became very competitive that graffiti artist would write their names as man times as possible. After a wile graffiti artist discovered that they where able to paint on the trains by sneaking in to the train yards. something that decreased the chance of getting caught so they started working more in to detailed pieces called bombs or bombing a popular way of graffiti that even today it still exists.

Once the trains started appearing with many types of colors and tagged the community started protesting and the trains where cleaned every time some one would paint on them after graffiti artists realized that there was no point in painting them they stopped and moved there art back on to the streets where it has remained up to this date. But graffiti didn’t stay just in new York or Philadelphia it rapidly caught the attention of many young boys and girls around the world from one continent to an other. Today graffiti is well established in many of the most popular cities and each and every city containing there own unique style of graffiti art.

Graffiti art doesn’t just mean art we see sprayed on walls. In fact, graffiti art has such strong characteristics that it’s easy to spot them everywhere – in schools, on sidewalks, on bicycles, on automobiles, on skateboards and on textbooks, just to name a few examples. Graffiti art has a loose feel about it. There are no strict rules to creating graffiti art, except a few distinct characteristics that always make graffiti art appear stylish. Let’s see what those characteristics are.

First, graffiti art are usually loose forms. But these forms are usually just clear enough to represent what they’re supposed to represent. The shapes are loosely created, and the subjects overlap one another in a rather random manner. Highlights are applied to the image if needed but again, these are loosely applied. Second, texts are usually visible, and drawn in an embossed manner that gives a 3D impression. These texts usually form a few words or a short phrase, and makes up a part of the entire graffiti artwork. And finally, graffiti art is usually created with a wide variety of colors. Bright and luminous colors like red, orange, yellow, green and blue are preferred. There’s little or no intention for color harmony and the goal here is to create a dazzling array of colors that draw attention to the graffiti art itself.

Due to these characteristics, it’s no surprise that we see so many teenagers being drawn to graffiti art. But once you recognize these characteristics, you’ll also come to understand that it’s not all that hard to create a piece of graffiti art, even if you know little about drawing. For a start, you may want to look up some tattoo images to use as reference images or to draw inspiration. Images like skulls or roses make great subjects for graffiti art. Once you have your image ready, you’ll need some magic markers as well. Try out the same image using different colors and see which end result you prefer. You may also wish to add in some texts.