Directions of street art stand out when looking at the actions of artists from different perspectives. For example, leaving only tags containing team names or personal signatures cannot, up to a certain point, be characterized as a political protest. Especially since the artists themselves may be far from politics. The usual bombing, which is where graffiti began. The situation would be completely different if the content of the graffiti was associated with something revolutionary. Usually the separation of trends is made on the basis of:
the relationship to specific types of art, such as graphics, sculpture, volumetric installations;
presence of elements of the general style in art – pop-art, non-conformism, modern and similar currents;
outweighing of characteristic specific features – artists tend to leave a lot of their inscriptions or work out every detail, the main thing for them is to cause a mood or change the appearance of the street.
Based on this, their own styles of street art emerge, which are often based on imitation. Someone’s drawings or inscriptions get popular, while others tend to create something similar. So what are the most common types of artwork in the city?
Graffiti
Graffiti is traditionally the name given to inscriptions. A variety of fonts are used to create them, and some work involves turning letters into images. For example, the letter “o” may be depicted as a face, and the letter “k” as a man. It is generally accepted that the technique of street art is divided into styles, which relate mainly to the manner of drawing the inscriptions and the conditions of work:
throw-up is the simplest style, involving the use of one or two colors – one for the outline and one for the fill. A favorite style of those who do bombing;
Blockbuster – also easy to do. It is characterized by brighter letters, which are massive and often cube-shaped. From it stands out the style of Bubble. This is almost the same, but the letters look like bubbles;
WildStyle – is based on the interweaving of a very large number of contours, which makes it very difficult to read the lettering.
The directions of graffiti do not set any limits. Everyone paints the way he likes … WildStyle, or wild style, emerged as a reaction of artists to how they saw walls where fellow artists had already worked. Everything comes out naturally and depends mostly on how the hand goes. As strange as it may sound, good lettering comes from a person with a can of paint in her without thinking about technique.
Drawings on walls.
They can be created by themselves, or they can be combined with inscriptions. And there are no rules here. Authors who have a true skill and appropriate education create the most professional graphics. Those same guys, to whom the main thing is self-expression, can create abstract paintings, focusing primarily on the intertwining of lines and colors of their works.
Stencils .
It’s possible to create silhouettes with precise contours without them, but unreasonably difficult. Even if he works without any device, he uses at least some technical means – marking large space or tracing contours with a projector. Stencils are no worse. The more so that a real artist makes them himself, and if he uses some means of automation during stencil creation, it is not to the detriment of the creative idea.
Murals
Murals are big drawings, which occupy the whole wall. The most common type of official street art. Illegally to draw such a huge picture can only be somewhere in the back of the city, on some outskirts, where no one cares what the wall will be.
Stickers
Small stickers, which are not very popular due to the fact that they merge with advertising. More often than not, stickers are used to spread some sort of slogan or image related to the game. The main game of all street art artists is capturing the space, spreading information in the widest way. For this purpose, stickers are best suited. True, not always and not for all.
Posters
As a stand-alone method of creative activity is practically not used. Only a few artists in Russia have experimented with posters and stickers. For example, in St. Petersburg posters were pasted around the city with passion by designer Agon Noga.
Installations
They are not that rare guests in the urban environment, but they are directly related to the street art with its own traditions when the artists try to add some real volumetricity to the inscriptions and drawings. In any case, the installations make us think of pop art rather than classic street art based on graffiti.