Spray-Paint Art Secrets - Lesson 3

Thanks again to Michele Albrigo for providing these lessons. Hopefully you will find them useful and informative. (Items in Parenthesis are my comments/additions)

Third lesson: rocks (and mountains).

Rocks can be drawn in some different ways, and since they probably are the most difficult thing to draw, every spray-artist has his/her own way to draw them. An example? My rocks are quite different from Adam Hartman's rocks, which seem to be quite similar to Hiroshi Rodriguez' rocks. Alessandro Urraso's rocks another italian spray painter are done in a third different way. I'll now explain my way to draw rocks, then I'll try to give a brief explanation about other ways for rocks.

The first thing you must do is to exactly decide the shape rocks will have. This is very important, since there are some changes between a far and sharp mountain and a near and round rock.

To draw a far and sharp mountain: you need a paintbrush and a secondary piece of paper. Put some paint on the 2nd sheet, and pick it up with the paintbrush, and draw the edge of the mountain you want to draw. If you want some examples of what kind of mountain you should draw, look at the mountains on the background of my drawings. Ok, now you have the edge of the mountain. Fill the smallest details of the edge you've drawn, e.g. the top of the highest mountains. Now, pick up the black can, and fill the rest of the mountain. You should now see the black shape of the mountain you want to draw. Ok, probably part of the paint has already dried, so you can't work very well on it. Pick the transparent can, and cover the mountain with transparent paint, so that the paint can get wet again. Now, with scratched newspaper, pull away the colour from the mountain. For planets, you should scratch the paper and straight it, for mountains, only scratch it, hold it with a hand and stamp it on the paint, not going outside the edge of the black paint. Now, with your spatula, draw the white edges of the rocks, trying to make them "natural" and not obviously invented this is not easy.

To draw near and round rocks: the same you've done before, but you don't need to draw the edge with the paintbrush, you can draw them directly with the black can. The spatula must be hold perpendicular to the sheet, with the flat metal part between the first two fingers of your hand, and it must be moved lightly on the paper. By increasing or reducing the pressure of the spatula on the sheet, you can make the white area larger or smaller. The spatula must be used some times before its results can be satisfactory just like cars, it need a period of "training" before it reaches its full performance.

This is all you must know about rocks. Well, don't expect rocks can be easy to draw. Almost all the practice you will do on spray paint will probably be spent in drawing rocks. They are the most difficult part of a drawing, and probably the most important, since they form the basis of any drawing. The only thing you must do to improve them is a lot of practice.

Other way to draw rocks are using an unscratched newspaper, or pulling away the colur directly with the newspaper. I have never used them, so I can't explain you how to do them.

To see some of Michele's works, click HERE.