Finishing with a masterpiece
People don’t realize that graffiti elimination isn’t just hard work, chemistry, and matching colors. It is sometimes an art form itself, as those of us who practice it know. It requires us to employ complex methods of disguising tags that can’t be removed.
Today, my final elimination of the great war was when I came across these two tags (which I did not recognize) on Euston Street - where I have not been in a few months.
They were on the same fence, but about 15 feet apart.
My first thought was to use my gray-and-taupe technique, which often works very well on this weathered, treated wood fence, which is the hardest of all surfaces for graffiti fighters. Even a pressure washer leaves a huge, bleached, raw wood section where the tag was. Only painting is proper. (I suppose you could sand and re-stain the fence!)
On the left-hand side, the technique worked very well. After careful application, this is what it looked like:
So I did the same with the one on the right, but it didn’t look great. The problem was that there was lots of green lichens growing on the fence, which I have seen before. When I applied the gray and taupe, it looked OK, but it was the only part of that section of the fence without any green, which drew the eye further in to notice that there was something wrong.
But then, I remembered, “Don’t I have some odd shades of green with me?” Then I tried the Rustoleum Painter’s Touch Leafy Green. I sprayed it from very far away (more than 18 inches) in a faint cloud over the area. I was very careful.
The result was this:
It wasn’t perfect - but it was close. You’d never notice this if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
I now had a new combination of paints for weathered wood fences with lichen. (Yes, I am sure a slightly darker shade of green would be even better.)
But more importantly, this was the finest work of graffiti elimination I have ever done. I was immensely proud of it.
