Graffiti Name Art

Graffiti Name Art-

This 5th grade lesson was started by showing the class different types of graffiti and how it has evolved overtime. If someone wasn't familiar with graffiti our teacher would quickly explain what it was and the purpose for most graffiti art. We learned about a famous graffiti artist and got to see a few examples of his work. Next our teacher explained symbolism and told us that our graffiti name tags needed to have at least two symbols that mean something to us. When we had decided on our two symbols we began our project. The first thing we did was get a normal sized sheet of white paper. On the paper our teacher had us write our names in pencil in different directions and scripts and then added our symbols to the design. Elements of the design needed to overlap at least 10 times and our names needed be written at least 5 times. When the design was completed we traced our pencil lines in black sharpie. Graffiti art is known for having black borders and thick bold lines so that's what we were creating with this project. After the design was outlined we learned about the different color schemes we could use to finish our graffiti art. Where parts of the design overlapped we would use different colors so that the design was in full color. The color schemes that we learned about were analogous, triadic, complementary, split-complementary, square color scheme, warm color , and cool color schemes. The color scheme I used was split-complementary which is the two colors adjacent to the compliment. After it was completely colored we glued our sheet of white paper on a larger piece of construction paper so it would act as a frame.

I really liked the concept of this lesson. It is a great way to introduce color schemes to students in a fun way. If I were to use this lesson I would have my students do it in a larger scale only because I love the message and look of graffiti. For example having the students create a large painting would be a way to get more detail into their graffiti art. While presenting this lesson I would stress that the graffiti art needs to have a strong message. This lesson of course will be geared towards a older audience and it will be the first step to getting students to understand the ideas and messages behind art. Many students in high school do not understand that art is more than just making a pretty picture but that a message is being told through the art.