Photoshop Project: Graffiti Tag

GOAL: Create a simple block or bubble style personal graffiti tag (also called a “throwie” or a “throw up”).

Samples

You can download Photoshop spray paint brushes here.

Every graffiti artist has their own style. These are a few examples, but they are certainly not the only ways to tag.

Graffiti tag: SERCH. Green & blue with orange and red strokes
Graffiti tag: FRIME. Ombre (gradient white to blue, with 3d extrusion in warm colors
Graffiti tag: light blue letters with dark blue outlines
Graffiti tag: RELE. blue with yellow spots.
Graffiti tag: TARDE. Cyan, white, navy blue, orange
Graffiti tag: SOUP. pink, red, tan colors
Graffiti tag: RTH. Gray, white, and yellow
Graffiti tag: TAME Purple, Green, and Yellow letters

There are more samples here, but there are many more online (and in the real world!).

This tutorial will show one way to make a tag. It is not the only way! If you want to do yours a different way, you may, as long as it follows these basic rules:

  • All visible elements are hand drawn. No built-in fonts, no downloaded images, no filters!
  • No more than six colors.
  • All text is school appropriate.
  • All text is reasonably easy to read (no wildstyle for your first work, please!).
  • Separate layers for colors and outlines.
  • A transparent background (or a background that can be hidden without breaking the tag).

Plan your letters

Open a new document. Make it fairly large. The sample image is 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels.

Make a new layer. Name it something like guide layer.

Add guide text. You can draw the letters, or use a simple font. These are hand drawn:

Text: LBMS in black letters on white.

Make another layer for the outline. Name it something like outline.

Make an outline around each of the letters. Some or all of the letters might overlap.

Text: LBMS in balloon black-edged letters and thin letters insideon white.

Make a layer between the guide layer and the outline for your main color. I usually name it the name of the color I’m going to use.

Color the color layer inside the lines of the outline layer.

Text: LBMS in puffy green letters with black outlines

Make it fancier. Add more layers for stylistic choices light shadows, highlights, borders, and depth. DO NOT USE FILTERS! DRAW EVERYTHING!

Text: LBMS in green bubble letters with highlights, shadows, and a blue blob in the background on white.

This is a simple tag. You can change the look by using different brushes.

One thing that’s different about the sample versions above and tags painted with spray cans is how solid and even the colors are. When you paint with a spray can, you can often see through the paint to the color of the wall below, like this:

Wall with graffiti that says NELA.

You can imitate this by changing the opacity and flow of a brush at the top of the screen.

Photoshop's Opacity and Flow controls.

Opacity is how much you can see through the brush during each stroke, if you overlap while drawing, the opacity does not change.

Flow works more like a spray can. Overlapping a mark will make it darker.

These three marks were drawn with the same brush with different flow & opacity settings. Notice how the lines look different where they cross themselves, and that the line with lower flow looks softer.

Graphic showing the difference between opacity and flow when using Photoshop brushes.

Try using a lower flow rate and one of the spray brushes to make your tag look more like it was done with spray cans.

Red graffiti letters: LBMS

To really make your tag look real, put it on a wall! I adjusted the opacity and blending to more closely match the background.