Urban Terrain Grafitti

[Grey]

So I've been building a lot of urban terrain off and on over the winter.

Whenever I get annoyed with something, I go and grab a bunch of various materials that I've got kicking around in the garage from the last job (I'm a small time contractor, so I've always got bits of wire, metal, wood, pvc, plastic, and old paint around) and slap something together.

Now I've got quite a bit of it made, with at least base coats of paint, and in a few cases some drybrushing done.

However, seeing as these are pretty big structure's for the most part (I'm planning eventually to lay out a city in a grid like pattern with streets and all.) I don't want to take too much time painting details.

While I can cheat for the large areas by drybrushing with old brushes from when I do exterior painting, there remains the little niggling details to really make it look look a battled over decaying city.

In comes grafitti.

I've been trying to make so that a number of buildings have a distinctive style of graffitti, to indicate the urban gangs and later the military units that have lived in and fought over the area, but its time consuming.

Sure I can just throw paint on, or do poorly hand painted jobs and blame it on the urban inhabitants poor artistic skills, but really that is just a cop out.

So I think I'm going to try to make some stencils.

I'm thinking that I could come up with a few specific gang and unit insignia stencils, cut them out of cardstock and use them to get a ton of grafitti all around the city as it were.

I was also thinking of coming up with an Imperial Arbite (or even an inquisition) stencil to use to cross out/put over top of the other grafitti in some areas.

Unfortunately, while I have over the years become at least a competant model and terrain painter and can of course do draftswork, I still have no real free form skill in painting or drawing.

So finally, here is my question.

Does anyone have the ability to come up with decent gang grafitti or military unit insignia/grafitti that I could then print off to help me out?

EDIT: The added advantage is the speed by which such stencils could be painted. I don't really require any more practise in painting, as well intentioned as such advice might be.

FURTHER EDIT: I decided I was being selfish here and that this thread should be devoted to putting forth all kinds of ideas for urban grafitti.

[Forger of Civilization]

Just use lots of light strokes, almost dry brush. AAll you need to do is practice. find a style you like. Do that for a while. Then throw in a different way of doing it. Flick your wrist a little differently. Just change a little each time until you have several styles.

If you want. Pratice once on each building. Wait a while. Now do a couple more on each building. Just use colors to designate gangs. Think of the fact that the wimps, newbies, will stay low ot the ground, the experianced ones will climb. Just have fun that what the graffitists do.

[Sir Theobold the Lame]

get hold of some examples of real urban graffitti to copy, check out urban art books or else check out the back of some hip hop magazines, some of which do have pages of grafffitti art- generally specific tags that you could borrow.

Some 'official' stenciling might look good too- i remember being in Genoa and seeing a stenciled warning left over from WW2 on a wall- it said: Allied Troops prohibited beyond this point without official permit' or something along those lines.

Other details that could look good would be street signs attached to walls, suitably battle damaged obviously

[PoptartsNinja]

You could also try to find / make some posters that would be easy to scale down for work on terrain... actual pieces of paper with printed warnings on them, recruitment posters, etc. Like the one warning about the dangers of Spore Mines in the back of the old Tyranid codex... anyone remember that?

Stuff like that would be awesome.

Edit: I found these on Google. Someone with photoshop skill could do far, far better... but you get the idea.

[Grey]

Thanks guys.

All of your answers have been in some way helpful to me.

I had totally forgot about that old 'Look to the skies' poster.

[Anabis_Xero]

i have photoshop. if you want me to i can see if i can put some posters or somthin together. if you have specific stuff woy want on it or anything let me know

[XenomarinesKiller]

i used the cityfight posters, then printed them, scanned them to paint, and using the spray function, i spraypainted slogans on top of signs, and made my own variations.

that was fun. i can send it to you so you can print it. my variations, and the originals that i scanned. it shouldn't be a problem, since they put it on their website for all to see.

[Grey]

i have photoshop. if you want me to i can see if i can put some posters or somthin together. if you have specific stuff woy want on it or anything let me know

I don't want to really put anyone to any work on this now that I think about it. It wouldn't be fair. But if you had already made up something along those lines, please put it up on the thread so that it can help others as well as myself.

[Anabis_Xero]

hey i dont mind. its not like i have anything better to do with my time (even though i should be painting lol) plus its stuff i can use in time when i finaly finish my urban terrain

[Grey]

OK.

I've plus repped everyone that has already posted on the thread.

Kind of rep abuse if there is such a thing, but I felt bad about asking folks for their help due to my position and the fact that it might make people more likely to help me for that reason.

So I wanted to get that out of the way by giving a rep cookie as it were to everyone who volunteered something and starting with a clean slate.


As I edited my first post above to read, I'd like to open up this thread to all urban grafitti ideas to help everyone rather than just me.

Cheers.