painting directly on the objects or not?

This week I have been really sick, so I did not get to accomplish as much as I would have hoped, but I did figure out a few important things.


What I Did:
1 hour getting more supplies
2.5 hours researching graffiti artists
5 hours creating plastic and paper faces to put on parking meters

What I Accomplished/Encountered/Discovered:
When I bought my paint pens, the man at the hardware store told me that painting on metal outside was going to be hard because it will take forever for it to dry, and he was right. I tried to paint on metal indoors and that even took forever. When trying to paint white on top of red, it basically ruined the white pen by making the tip forever pink. It turns out, if I want to paint on top of a different color, I will basically have to wait about a day for the underneath paint to dry. I also thought about using Sharpie markers on top of paint, but it is the same situation.

Therefore, I decided to think up a few different ways to apply faces to the structures. I traced the dimensions of the details of a parking meter, and I made mouths out of Sharpie on plastic and colored pencils on paper. I am going to attach the paper with wheat paste and the plastic with super glue onto different parking meters and I am also going to paint directly on a parking meter and possibly use Sharpie directly on one in order to find the best solution to the problem. With the paper and plastic mouths, I created both the open mouth and the lips because the surface to put the open mouth is a flat surface and the one where I would put the lips is rounded and also has indents. This will allow me to see if the plastic and/or paper fails on bumpy surfaces compared to flat ones.

With the paper, I can get the most detail, with the plastic, it will look more seamless but with a little less detail, and by painting directly on the object, I will get the least detail of all but it will look more integrated into the object and less like I just stuck it on.

There are some graffiti pieces by unknown artists that I have been looking at that involve paper and wheat paste. These pieces are found on the ground and contain an unusual content that is very surprising. The first piece with the fake money on the ground catches people off guard because one of the best surprises is to find money on the ground, but you don't usually find it. You have to get close to this piece to realize it is not real. The second piece is more surprising like my ideas where the person took an everyday object on the street and added some imagination to it.

This is another piece of street art that I found and really liked.  The artist, Anna Garforth, took an everyday object, created a face out of it, and placed it on the street. She made it into a plant holder, however, so it makes sense to put it outside. I don't know if it relates to my idea that much, but I really like how she is reusing an object, bringing more plant life outside to an area that looks like it does not have much to begin with, and she is doing it in a creative way to bring imagination and child-like pleasures to the public.

What I Plan to Do Next:

This weekend, I am going to attach my plastic and paper mouth onto parking meters, and I want to paint directly on parking meters as well to see which one works the best. I want to know exactly what my plan is for attaching these creatures to the structures for the rest of the semester.