Graffiti and Street Art Drawings

Drawings have always been used by graffiti and street artists as a starting point to study and design the final version of their artwork before going in the streets. Their sketches are usually made with ink, pencils, charcoal, markers, pens, and other tools to draw on paper. As a result, they are commonly called “works on paper” because of the medium used.

In graffiti, drawing is critical and graffiti artists have always carried their famous "Blackbook" with them, a hardcover leather-bound sketchbook which is used to make sketches of the graffiti that will then be made on trains or walls thereafter. The core of Graffiti being the development of letterforms, it always starts with a drawing on paper to figure out what works aesthetically and what can eventually be used on a large-scale format. Given the importance of the art of drawing in Graffiti, sketchbooks have become essential in the development of the Graffiti Art movement. They show the artist’s commitment and the respect earned in the scene as graffiti artists sign and draw in each other’s sketchbooks and collaborate on graffiti sketches on paper within a single Blackbook.

But when it comes to street art, drawings are not only fundamental to designing the composition and planning in detail large-scale murals, they are sometimes also the final artwork. The first street artist to draw in public space was Keith Haring, who gained mainstream acclaim thanks to his illegal chalk drawings on empty advertising panels in subway stations. Since then, other street artists have used their drawings as final artworks, in particular poster artists or collage artists who paste up in the streets their original drawings on paper or wheatpaste after having prepared them in the studio. For example, paste-up artist Levalet draws his characters with Indian ink on paper, while poster artist Bortusk Leer draws his cheerful characters with spray paint and acrylic markers on a page of a newspaper or the artist Laser 3.14 writes his street poems with black spray paint, either directly on wooden panels in the street or on paper.

Thus, many graffiti and street artists use paper as a medium of choice, whether to consider it as a medium for experimentation, a first step for their creation or simply as a final artwork that can be sold. Graffiti and street art drawings that are for sale on the platform Urbaneez are essential items for urban art collectors because they are more affordable than a painting and they enable you to acquire a unique work of art which is between a print and an original canvas. Discover our large choice of original drawings online and buy your favorite drawing from established graffiti and street artists like Sozyone, Alex Kuznetsov, Mondé or emerging artists like Kanos, Amsted and Mister Pee.