Yesterday after lunch I found myself under a highway overpass in Washington DC with a can of spray paint can in my hand. We were doing an activity as part of a team retreat for work, and in one of the more inspired ideas for teambuilding I’ve ever experienced, we hired a guy to meet us with ten boxes of paint cans and show the uninitiated how to use them for street art. I’ve always used spray paint for projects but never really thought about how they work for art, so it was a lot of fun to look at the existing work on the walls and deconstruct how it was created. One big takeaway was that white and black are crucial colors to highlight and outline new work, especially when it’s over older art. it’s a lot harder than it might look, and I left with a new respect for good, cleanly executed graffiti, as well as a newfound desire to go tag something.