When you miss Chicago, just graffiti your home
a tale of two years ago
Wow ok. First post for the new site and the new blog. Two years ago we bought a fixer upper in Washington. It’s the typical 70’s split-level home, but we just fell in love with the neighborhood. The entire house was severely out of date and in various shades of cream brown, yellow, and red. We made the house open space, added wood floors, but by far my favorite update has been the concrete and folded steel staircase.
I really love the look of black steel stairs and the carpeted stairs we had were not only old, but unstable. I sketched an initial design for a steel staircase with the main idea being that the two stairs could share a railing. This not only looks a lot cleaner but would increase the widths of the steps. I found a metal fabricator who was willing to do the work for us and make sure my design would be up to code. Fun fact: we had to install the stairs not once… but twice! Once to ensure everything fit and then the second time after being powder-coated. Anyway, because I love and miss Chicago, I had them drop off the powder-coated steel header early so I could throw some graffiti on it.
Planning the graffiti
Having lived in Chicago for most of my life, I already knew the kind of graffiti that I’m drawn to. I’m big on old school exaggerated 3D effects, arrows, and embellishments. And of course, it can’t be TOO easy to read.
Good graffiti really plays with colors to make contrasts. I used a red marker on my sketch to draw out the where my different blocks of color would be. This was just so I could easier interpret my own drawing and differentiate my shapes. After this, I moved to Photoshop and did some crude coloring to figure out the palette that I wanted to use. Once I had my colors down, I bought graffiti paint markers. These dry instantly and are permanent.
Changing on the fly
On the black steel I used a white charcoal pencil to sketch out my drawing and make adjustments to fill the space. Then came the terrifying part. Once color gets on the black steel, there’s no way to get it off. I used one color across the entire image at a time to avoid muddling or smudging.
I actually painted the whole thing before I realized that using the baby blue as the base wasn’t working for me. I repainted the entire thing with the pale green instead as the background color and thankfully these opaque markers are wonderful at covering up. I finished off the graffiti with silver outlines and with no need for sealant or coat, I was done!
