Yes! #GraffitiArt Can Make You Rich ‘“ Career Advice

Are you artistic and passionate about art?

Do you find yourself making rough sketches of random things rather than jotting down your notes? Whenever you look at walls, you think they could have looked more colourful and vibrant, had they been spray painted.

You can surely do well as a Graffiti Artist.

Often associated with vandalising private or public property, graffiti is considered as a modern form of art, but dates back to the dark ages when the prehistoric men created murals on caves. However, the art of graffiti has gained popularity only after 1980s and was used by individuals or a group of people to tag others with certain names and paint such tags on walls. It especially gained popularity with gangs who used graffiti to mark certain properties as their own.

While some city officials have succumbed to amateur Graffiti Artists painting walls of metropolitan cities and have asked them to create a more appreciable form of art in the past, rather than spending huge amounts on cleaning the walls, others have come to appreciate this form of art and not look down upon Graffiti Artists as vandals.

But, unlike amateur Graffiti Artists, you may not want to deface public or private property with your art. You may want to use walls as an arsenal to hone your artistic abilities, but you can work in a studio just like a painter to avoid getting involved with the legality of the art. Not conforming to the laws may end up in you paying for your career with money or by some sort of community service, rather than your career giving you the way to mint money.

Graffiti has gained so much fame in yesteryears that now it can be taken up as a career option with artists working part-time or freelancing for city officials or building owners who want to enhance the beauty of a building by getting murals created all over the surface. This also gives the graffiti artists a form of expression. Some of you can practice your art on a canvas and put the final piece up for art shows and exhibitions and earn attractive perks for that.

Some major corporations such as Smirnoff, Coca-Cola and Microsoft also hire graffiti artists to paint ads to make their companies more appealing to the youth. Graffiti artists have also been hired before in IT companies such as IBM for promoting their new operating systems.  It is now not only a more tolerated form of art but also is among the most celebrated ones. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Though you may choose to teach yourself the art by practicing on streets, you can improve on your skills with an art course. You can also buy sketchbooks and start off with making bubble letters. You can opt for bigger canvases too where you can practice your designs, just to sell them later and make it a monetary deal. Taking up private assignments to paint walls in residences, office buildings or eating joints and cafés can be a great idea to get a step ahead and earn some more money. You must have seen the funky designs on Café Coffee Day or Costa’s walls that have come to define the coffee houses so well, making the youth connect better to these places.

While you cannot expect to work full-time as a graffiti artist in India, you can take up projects with individual prices for each project, depending on the amount of space to be covered with the designs and how big or small the design should be. You can also get promoted through ‘word-of-mouth’ as your work will speak for you once you are out there, working as a Graffiti Artist.

If your artwork requires heavy detailing and intricate designs, the remuneration can be higher. Though art does not come with a price tag, yet the better known you become in the industry and the greater success you achieve with your work, the better the pay package is.

The graffiti art business has a certain bright future as what earlier was rare and looked down upon with contempt and anger, is being noticed much more commonly and is valued too, with many start-up companies, small-scale businesses, eateries, restaurants and even residences ready to pay for such arts.

While you may need to find some other employment service till the time your work gets more recognition, you do have the scope to see an exponential growth in your career as a Graffiti Artist as they have come to be considered as fine artists, who in 2008, were known to earn approx. 2,65,0078 INR! Would you still want to curb your practice of the art only to your sketchbook?

So get down to some rigorous research work on graffiti designs and get ready with your spray cans, permanent markers, stickers and stencils to take your art from an A4 size paper to a 4-storey building size banner!