Spray paint me impressed

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A few months ago, the North Florida Fair was here in town. Yes, that strangely compelling mix of agricultural and commercial exhibits, overpriced carnival games and rides, and yummy-but-bad-for-you food (funnel cakes and the like). I went on a Saturday afternoon with a group of friends.

We soaked up the atmosphere for a while, wandered the rows, looked at the exhibits, watched the racing pigs. We partook of pizza, corn dogs, and other meats on sticks. We passed on the $1 per ticket, 3-5 tickets per ride attractions, but dropped some money a few times on games to win the cheaply made stuffed animal or two. Eventually, it was time to go home, and we were heading towards the exit.

This monstre’s attention was caught by the sizable crowd of people oohing and aahing on one side of the path. Curiosity aroused, I had to see what was going on. As I moved to the side of the crowd around the tent-covered display, the first thing to greet my eyes was fire. A young woman sat on a low stool at a low table in the center, and she was holding a small piece of canvas, the object from which the flames were sprouting. After the obligatory crowd-pleasing comment “don’t try this at home”, she quickly put out the flames.

Further details came into focus. The front of the display contained many paintings, rather nice looking, rather detailed. Some looked like fantasy images. The young woman was dressed in overalls, and she was covered in paint – a multitude of smears and colors. Her clothes, her hands, even some of her face. An assistant or two helped handle purchases being made by the crowd.

The canvas, no longer afire, was mostly one color, perhaps two. With a few deft movements, the woman grabbed up a can from the box of spray paints sitting next to her and sprayed a few strokes onto the canvas. Then again, with another color. Quickly, she had sprayed on a fuzzy pattern of red, white, and blue. Looked somewhat like a rough flag design, but not the traditional US flag. It still didn’t look like much, and certainly nothing like the other paintings on display, which contained sharp lines and details, and couldn’t possibly be the result of spray paint. Could they?

Suddenly, she inexplicably covers most of the existing design with black paint. Now, she grabs up a small straight-edged item – I think it was a small piece of cardboard or perhaps even a short ruler. She scrapes a rectangle on the canvas, exposing a mix of colors underneath. Then another rectangle next to it. Then, in rapid fire succession, a bunch of smaller rectangles of varying sizes and shapes, to either side of the two big ones. It was now becoming clear to me. Astounded, I realized that in the course of a few seconds, she had just scraped out the New York City skyline (yes, the two big rectangles were the twin towers) – the colors of the buildings (from the layers of paint underneath) now a definite contrast to the black that they were scraped from. With a smaller pointed item, she scrapes out some detail, including the antenna on top of one of the towers.

With this continued technique of scraping, carving, and smearing out top layers of paint, more detail is added to the picture, and the end result is a beautiful nighttime image of the NYC skyline, with patriotic colors in the background (the red, white, and blue). One of the coolest effects was when she took a simple piece of paper and smeared it along the bottom (i.e. the ground area in the picture), exposing the most wonderful blend of color and texture to make up the ground.

We stood and watched as she did a few more paintings in this same manner, the technique now becoming more obvious. There were no brushes, no palettes for mixing colors. The paintings would begin with layers of spray paint in various formations, and the picture would be created by scraping and smearing away layers of paint to expose the colors underneath. The next painting was a beautiful sunset over water, with palm trees on the land. The perfect sun image was created simply by spraying the sun colors, then placing a bowl on the canvas and spraying around it with another color for sky, leaving the circle of the sun intact.

So has anybody seen painting done like this before? I certainly hadn’t, and the detail was wonderful and amazing, to an extent I would never have guessed for art done only with spray paint. One of my friends bought a copy of the NYC skyline picture to hang in her office, before we left.

Color me seriously impressed!

2

I have one of those paintings hanging in my room right now. I bought it from some dude doing it on 6th Street in Austin. I thought it was pretty neat at the time, now it is just tacky, but the process is still cool

3

I’ve seen it done before - at one of the commecial exhibits at the State Fair - a couple of different artists at a couple of different times. I know that at least one of them was a young lady - I don’t remember the age or sex of the other. Many of the paintings were space or fantasy themed. I’ve heard that it’s a more common art form in Mexico. I do know that the young lady artist was Mexican and that she didn’t speak much English. There was someone there with her who translated the requests for her and sort of acted as her announcer (if I remember correctly, it was her husband). It was absolutely fascinating to watch.

4

not quite the same, but a when I was in school , a popular art lesson involved crayon stripes of different colours, then cover the whole thing with black paint… wait until dry, then scrape off.

I think you can even buy ready-made kits, in which the preparation has already been done, and you just need to scrape - called ‘scraperfoil’ or something like that.

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Actually in L…A. <venice beach boardwalk> this is done with scrapers and lids of various sizes and spray paints of various colors but minus the fire … you used to be able to get them for 5-15 bucks depending on size

I’ve also seen the ones at the fair but they wanted insane pricewell insane if you knew how it was done anyways

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Painting as a performing art? WILD! :smiley:

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So how does fire come into this? Did one suck so badly that she torched it, or what?

8

You can watch a multitude of painting techniques in and around Time Square. (especially in the warmer months)

9

The one year I miss the N. Fla. fair and something cool like this happens. Damn. I thought the pig races were cool, how’d I miss that?

Sounds like some sort of advanced scratchboard technique. I’ve done work on scratchboard before. The color is laid down first, and a thin layer of a black clay type substance is baked over it (hence the fire). The clay is then scraped away to reveal the colors underneath. I’ve never actually prepared my own board before, though. You can go to your local art store and buy sheets of it pre-made. It’s a lot of fun.

I would have loved to have seen it!

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I was guessing the fire was to keep the paint from getting too hard and dry too quick, but I’m probably way off. Anyways, the thing that I found fascinating was the level of detail on the pictures, and the fact that it was done with nothing but spray paint. (And yes, I remember the old “scrape away a layer to expose the crayons underneath in grade school” thing, but that just wasn’t the same :wink: )

According to the artist, she claimed to be only “one of X people in the US who painted using this technique” – where X was some number below 20, if I recall correctly. I would have no idea how common this specific technique was – I just knew that I had never seen it before, and it was pretty interesting.

She seemed to have a main set of pictures that she did – the “same” ones weren’t always exactly alike, but had the same major themes and forms. I don’t know if she just learned a specific set of pics (perhaps this is a typical sidewalk attraction kind of thing) or if they were pics specifically created and developed by her, now in her repertoire. Multiple copies were in demand, though – more than one person in the crowd wanted to buy specific pictures.

11

Was it Robinson’s Racing Pigs? I saw them at the state fair here in NC a few years ago. Now that’s art…

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They used to come down here and perform, but according to the fair’s website this year it was the Show Me Swine racers.
Monstre, did you try any of the new rides? That Power Surge ride looks wicked!

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Nope – not this year. I would have if we went on a night with the unlimited rides passes for one flat fee (I think it was $15?). On a regular day, $15 gets you what now… three rides? Damn ride ticket prices go up every year, and most good rides are 5 tickets.

14

I have seen it too and was almost as impressed as I was with the guy in Dallas that sketches women’s butts. Now he was good!

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He sketched pictures of women’s butts? Or he sketched ON women’s butts? ::: mental images forming :::

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I saw this done on Canal Street in New Orleans between Christmas and New Years. This was a young man and he used the same technique you described monstre except he used a small blowtorch for the fire. We saw him paint a city skyline but there were mountains in the background so I’m not sure what city it was supposed to be. I had never seen anything like it before.

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Maybe somebody else has seen him? He worked in the rejuvinated downtown area, the name of which escapes me now, and was a short, stout black guy and he ONLY sketched women’s butts but he did so magnificently. They always came out as perfect pear shaped asses. It was a sight to behold.

Boy, talk about the perfect job.

18

Fire is not absolutely necessary to the process… but when you’re mixing salesmanship with street theatre, particularly at night, it’s a great way to gather a crowd quickly. Fire do tend to catch the eye…