12 Levels of Graffiti: Easy to Complex

Hi, my name is Carlos Mare, also known as Mare 139.

I am a sculptor, I'm a painter, legendary graffiti artist,

and I've been challenged to demonstrate graffiti

in increasing levels of complexity.

[upbeat music]

Graffiti is a letter based art form,

a sophisticated style of penmanship

where you give yourself a name

and you embellish it with signifiers

that are common in the culture.

This is my interpretation of graffiti,

but everyone has their own style.

Level one, basic tag.

A basic tag may seem like a simple step,

but what we're focusing on is choosing a name

that we're capable of stylizing.

So you have to learn those forms and those gestures

and that muscle memory before you move on to the next level.

I chose the name Mare

because I thought nightmare was a cool name to have,

as a kid who was terrorizing the streets with my tag,

but then I cut it down to Mare.

[Kid] Mare?

[Mare] Yeah.

[Kid] M-E-A-R?

M-A-R-E.

[Kid] M-A-R-E?

Yeah.

[Kid] Mar.

Mare.

[everyone laughs]

For the next level, we're gonna take basic penmanship

and make a design, a graffiti design.

Level two, finding your own style.

We start taking the tag and start embellishing it

and adding design to it, giving it character.

So something to consider about graffiti style writing,

go back and reference when you were a kid

and you were learning how to write your name

in straight letters.

You had to learn form and balance.

And then you had to learn how to write a signature,

so now that signature had to have your personality

and your swagger.

You can take that concept over into graffiti as well.

One of the traits of the Broadway elegant style

is that it's round and long.

It would start off nice and tight

and small and round at the top,

and then kind of open up a little bit more at the bottom

as it elongates, and that's a very unique aspect

of this lettering form from the late 60s and early 70s.

In level one, we used a basic stock cap.

In level two, we use a fat cap.

Now this cap allows you to have a broad stroke

when you paint your name.

Now that we've learned about hand styles,

let's talk about embellishing.

Level three, embellishing a tag.

There are many embellishments you can add to your tag.

You could add stars, exclamation points, quotations,

underscoring lines with arrows that point down.

You can even put force fields around it.

With some of these elements,

you're letting people know something about you.

One of the embellishments I like to use is the crown M.

To me, that signifies that I'm a style master,

but also that I'm crowned up from the ground up.

Now that we've worked on our style a bit, let's go get up.

Level four, throw ups, AKA throwies.

A big part of graffiti is getting your name up

everywhere you can.

With the throw up, or throwie,

I condense my name Mare, M-A-R-E, to M-E,

so that I can produce them quicker and faster

and more abundantly.

Bubble letters, also known as softies,

you're supposed to do them really quick, outline them,

fill them in and move on.

The numbers in a signature, like mine, Mare 139,

that tells you I'm from 139th Street,

so it's kind of a geotag

before the term geotag in technology.

Now that we've learned about tags and throwies,

let's move on to more complex forms of graffiti.

Level five, planning a masterpiece.

Today I'm calling this piece a masterpiece

because of how it's going to evolve

from one simple drawing on paper

into a magnificent painting.

It's important but not necessary to draw your outline.

It's always good to have a sketch or something in mind

before you apply it to the wall.

In my case, I drew mine out

because I wanted to have a certain kind of symmetry

and balance in my piece today.

Well, the inspiration for this piece

came from the first letter.

That really set the tone.

I saw design elements there that made sense to me.

The initial marks that I put on the wall

were just guides for me,

and in order for me to have the symmetry I was looking for,

I had to make sure I knew

where the parameters were on the wall.

Don't worry about perfection,

because once you start outlining and sketching it,

the paint dries fast so you can coat it again

and keep coming back to perfect your piece.

So the guides are just there

to help you get through the process.

As you get more comfortable

and you start getting more creative,

you lose all those guides

and you start really really embellishing

and freely interpreting what you want.

Now that we have our initial outline,

let's start giving it color.

Level six, the fill.

So once you have your basic outline,

you wanna fill in your piece,

and generally, you start with a solid color

or decide what color palette you're gonna use

and then start applying it accordingly.

But the fill in is really important,

that's where you really start blocking out

your piece on the wall.

With the throwie,

you'll notice how haphazardly it was filled in, very quick.

With the masterpiece, I took my time with the paint.

I really want it to stick, I want it to be opaque,

I want it to show that I was really invested

in what I was doing.

One of the things about painting a masterpiece

is that you gotta be prepared

to kinda have a dance with the wall, so to speak.

It's all this muscle memory, of course, but there's a flow

as your body extends with these lines.

It is a very physical act

and requires some endurance and focus,

so be prepared to have a very numb hand

at the end of the day.

One of the things with the spray can,

you have to kind of master the pressure,

so this way, you can determine

how thin and how heavy your stroke will be.

Now that we have our letters down,

we can move on to the background.

Level seven, adding a background.

Background painting is important

because it really sets the stage for your painting.

It really gives it a home to sit on.

A background gives you a sense of completion with your piece

'cause they really allow your name to stand out.

For the background force field, I used a New York fat cap,

which is a versatile cap.

It allowed me to do a fine line

but also use it for broad strokes.

The colors I chose had a lot of contrast between them.

The reason I chose it

is because they would pop off the wall.

To me, everything in graffiti

is subjective and customizable.

It's about finding your own style.

Level eight, blends.

Blending colors is a technique

that allows you to really give form and shape

to your letters.

You can do gradations from dark to light,

but also you can do highlights that really accentuate

and give it body, a roundness

or even reflection of a light source.

The blending technique I used, I chose to do it very subtly

so it gives the letters some kind of volume,

a little bit more oomph, but not too much.

So part of the technique I was using with the blue shading

has a lot to do with finger pressure,

and I was releasing air out of the can

so I'd have a softer spray.

And also, the distance matters,

and at how fast you turn your hand when you're spraying.

Now that we filled in the piece

and did some blends and gradients in it,

I wanna come back and give it some design elements

to embellish it.

Level nine, design embellishments.

I did some embellishment on the piece with purple dots

and designs that are on the left side

of the piece structure.

You can use whatever you want.

There are no rules.

There is a foundation, but there are no rules.

You can design whatever you want, however you want

within your piece.

This way, it starts to bring more life

to the whole production.

Level 10, the final outline.

An outline can make or break your piece.

Graffiti is style writing,

so your letters have to be on point.

It can be a great fill in and great colors,

but your outline's important because it really defines

your letter structures.

It's the most important part of the process.

There are certain things you can see in an outline

that's not very good, whether the line is not straight,

whether there are a lot of drips.

So it's all about practice

and making sure your form is on point.

Colors are secondary.

Getting your outline done

is one of the most important parts of your masterpiece,

because this really brings out your lettering style.

You can paint all the beautiful colors you want

and it could hide your outline and you could be judged on it

by, yes, being a nice painting, but not a good style.

It's probably the most challenging and nerve-wracking of all

because you want it to be as crisp and clean

and precise as possible.

With the outline, I used a thin cap.

That's important, because it allows me

to really carve out my piece with a fine line

and not have the over spray or have a lot of drips.

When you're putting your final outline,

this is where your muscle control comes into play.

This is where your muscle memory matters,

so that you know how to move, not just your arm

but your body weight along with the shapes of your letters.

At this point, I could walk away and be done,

but I wanna add one more layer of complexity

to really highlight my piece.

Adding highlights is subjective.

It all depends on your style.

Hitting the piece with the white highlight

really makes it pop.

It suggest something,

it suggests that light is striking the piece.

It gives you a sense of volume.

While it's a 2D object, it makes it look 3D.

There are variations on highlights

where you can do straight lines across

and smaller lines intersecting it

to make it look like a shine,

but in my instance, I did a fast streak

with a nice hazy finish at the end of it.

The nice thing about giving it a soft hazy finish,

it gives it a sense of luminance and brilliance,

as if it was a glass surface.

Level 12, the future of graffiti.

Graffiti is about getting your name up as much as possible.

Now with digital graffiti, you can spread your name

and your artwork throughout the Internet

around the whole world.

You can now apply it on different platforms,

from AR to VR to 3D print and into the Metaverse.

The New York City subway system brought my work

to millions of people.

The Internet brought my work to billions of people.

It has also allowed me as an artist to expand

and see graffiti in very different forms,

and it's really important because now with virtual reality,

I can draw these graffiti sculptures in space

and walk around them and articulate them

in very different ways that I couldn't have done before

in traditional means.

So let's take a look at this M.

Consider that we started, level one,

writing our name very straight up and down

and then gave it style.

Then we modeled it in three dimensions in VR

and output it for 3D printing.

And now, I can place this anywhere I want

in the public space, and it can be an Easter egg

for anyone who finds it.

[hip hop music]

Graffiti is an ever-evolving art form.

Once considered an illegal art form

is now celebrated and practiced worldwide.

You can find it in museums, you can find it in advertising,

you can find it in fashion, you can find it on the Internet.

The more you practice it,

you can find your place for it and in it.

The more you practice, the more you look at other artists,

the more you collaborate with other artists,

the better you will become.

Graffiti style writing is an art form.

It's a personal expression.

Go out, go get up.

Full disclaimer, don't get arrested.