Fresh Creative Co visited Oystermouth Primary School in Swansea last week to run a graffiti workshop for their year 6 students. This was run in conjunction with Craftsea UK and Mumbles Development Trust.
The aim of this workshop was to give the students an introduction to drawing and painting graffiti whilst also producing a single 8ft by 4ft board with the students which could then be displayed in their school. Before the session began we made sure to arrive early and emulsion the board which the school had had delivered so that it was ready for the group to work on when the time came.
Once that was completed we began the session in the classroom with a brief talk and demonstration on the basic techniques of drawing graffiti style lettering, taking time to go over exactly how we put our letters together, and also touching on 3D and perspective. We also talked about what we wanted to paint on the board. The students had already discussed this with their teacher and decided that they wanted to paint the word ‘Croeso’ which is Welsh for ‘welcome’. They hoped to display this at the entrance to the school to greet people as they came in.
Once we had a plan in place we split the group up into smaller groups of seven or eight who would come outside one group at a time to work on the project with us. We marked up the rough outline of the word on the board and then set about filling in the colours with the individual groups, showing each group how to use the spray paint cans properly, and explaining how to use different caps on the cans to achieve different effects such as blending two colours together. We cycled through the different groups, making sure that everyone got at least a couple of opportunities to make their mark on the work, building it up slowly over the course of the session. We also added on some 3D to the letters which the students also painted.
Spray paint can be difficult to control when you aren’t used to using it, so there is always a certain amount of tidying up the students work to be done to ensure that they’re left with a product that looks as good as it can. Once the piece had been filled in and the 3D was in place we stayed behind to tidy up their work, adding some extra bits into the fill before outlining the letters in black and adding some white highlights onto the letters and some shadows into the 3D. Finally we added a blue ‘glow’ around the piece as a whole to help separate it away from the background. It’s often not until these final elements and outlines are in place that the piece really comes together into a finished piece of work.
We wished the students a farewell and left the finished piece with them for mounting once it had dried.
We really had a great time with the students of Oystermouth and I can’t overstate what a great group they were to work with, being polite, friendly, attentive and hard working on the project. We were really pleased with the piece they managed to produce and hope that they enjoyed their experience as much as we did. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to return and do some more work with them in the future.
