u/MachineStudio

Here’s a simple progression with the letter R. For new people, starting with the basic letters and working out how to balance them would be a good place to stick around for a while. From there, slowly building on complexity and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone while still maintaining the balance you’re looking for will naturally evolve your skills.

That and practice way more than you think you need to. Most people aren’t willing to put in the time it takes to really develop skills. It will increase the likelihood of developing good styles if you outwork everyone else.

Here’s a little more on evolving the letter S from block letter to a piece.

Here’s a little complexity progression of the letter K. Starting out super simple, then building onto the style and detail of the letter. There’s a lot of value in getting your simple letters down before moving onto more complex work. You can’t hide anything in simple letters.

Something new people could work on early on is learning how to feather the cap to control the amount of paint that comes out. This’ll let you go from super fat lines to thin using the same cap. An easy cheat is to put a makeshift cardboard casket on the can to make it easier, but I’d suggest getting it down without it.

Something I like to do when piecing is sort of a second sketch. The first one is loose, figuring shit out. Then once you’re happy with it, go back over it with a different, contrasting color. In the second phase, I usually add some additional details like bits or cracks. I find it really helpful.

Demo on how to achieve a rusty cement fill on your pieces. The overall fill is with shades of grey with streaks running down where the water discolored the cement. Then on the spots where there are cracks, we add some dripping rust. In order for the cement to have rust, there needs to be some metal present, so keep that in mind when deciding where the rust goes.

When you’re starting out with spray paint a good way to get your control up is to rock Rustoleum with just the stock cap. The Rusto stock cap is one of the best stock caps out there. Once you get used to it, you can get really nice clean lines. If you get good with the Rusto stock cap, then move on to other caps and more modern paint, you’ll have a much easier time. It’s like when they put that weighted donut on a baseball bat; when they take it off, its effortless to swing.

I was thinking about cap combos for beginners and it seems like the Vice Cap and the Lego might be a good combo. They’re both higher output caps so it forces you to move a little faster.

A lot of beginner work has wobbly lines that look like they’re moving too slow. In the 90s, all the paint we had was high pressure and hard valves, so it forced us to learn to move faster. With the lower pressure and softer valves of modern cans, it seems like that might slow the learning process a little.

Using the Vice Cap and Lego cap might help push the learning phase of speed and distance a little harder and build the skills faster.