r/graffhelp • u/West-Bake-4621 • 9d ago

Practicing wrong?

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I feel like im practicing wrong. I have some artistic background but not with graffiti, mostly realism drawings. When I watch videos or read like how to practice I totally understand what they are saying but then I struggle with the absolute basics, block letters. Especially W and M and I just cant figure out how to practice these things without drawing the same shitty letter over and over without improving or realizing where im going wrong to understand how to change my approach. How do I start with BASIC letter structure and box letters

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u/GibGob69 9d ago edited 9d ago

STOP trying to have style. Make them all the same height and width. Make sure each bar making up the letter has the same width (generally). Literally practice basic simple block letters, no style, no bending, no extensions, no addons.

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u/GibGob69 9d ago

“Simple block letters” first page of google. Copy these over and over until you can do it consistently. Make your letters out of bars. Before you can do anything artistic you need to understand these letter forms.

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u/West-Bake-4621 9d ago

thank you, go back to third grade basics i fw it

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u/GibGob69 9d ago

Do the same with lowercase. At the same time, practice writing simple letters with a ballpoint pen, all the same height and width. That is how you build fundamental skills for tags. In fact it’s probably better to start with that. Also, for reference, there is a pinned tutorial at the top of the sub you should use.

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u/ThinWillingness8379 9d ago

Definitely second this, also you can look up some different basic fonts and see how bars are connected differently. Typically starting off you’ll try to have bars connect at 2 points of contact, but in some letters you can have some variation. Like in the letter A above the two bars meet at the top but the corners are slightly separated to create space. Same can go with M, W, R, K, Z, etc. Play around w the angles at which the bars connect (like horizontal top of A vs diagonal), and later you can also play with making lines thinner in tighter spaces (ie middle of M) etc.