CALLIGRAPHY SERIES
Over quarantine I picked up Chinese calligraphy as a hobby.
The more that I studied the medium, the more comparisons I found between calligraphy and graffiti, another medium I practice. Over the past few months, I’ve spent time creating murals that combine the two.
Each piece combines East with West, highbrow with lowbrow, and past with present.
LONG (DRAGON)
My process typically begins with a sketch. LONG was my first calligraphy mural, so I wanted to accentuate the calligraphic composition of the character with graffiti elements such as shadow, 3D, and contrast. I started the sketch by writing using my calligraphy brush and adding colors and a background around it.
龍
I found that improvisation helped during the spray paint process. Accentuating lines with more curve and depth made the piece come alive. I added a patchy combination of orange and red for the fill of the character to emulate the texture of brush strokes. The flow and energy of the piece evokes the image of a red dragon racing over blue clouds.
Long Graffiti Piece
Long Graffiti notebook sketch
Long Graffiti Piece
KAI (BLOOM)
I sketched the image on this table with springtime in mind. For Kai, my friends and I used paint brushes as well as spray cans to refine edges.
FU (HAPPINESS)
FU is a Chinese character that is hung on the doors of households during Chinese New Year, meaning happiness. Contrasting patterns separate the subject from its background and highlights/overlap make the character itself pop visually.
REN (PERSEVERANCE)
REN roughly translates to ‘determination’ or ‘perseverance’, although the actual meaning has a more gritty connotation. The character has a lot of interesting compositional elements which ultimately create its balance, and I wanted to capture its composition as well as the flow and energy created from each of the strokes. In my sketches, you can see the lines tracing the brush from the beginning to end of each stroke. This eventually became the framework for the gradients used in this piece; my first ever exploration into blending spray paint.
