What to Do in Granada? MYSALA Culture Club

Hello my rowdy readers, “cómo estás?” and all that. I hope January and the start of 2012 was pretty special – I know it was for me!

Anyway a New Year and a new bucket list item ticked off. That’s right, last weekend I achieved one of those long-standing goals I’ve had ever since I first clapped eyes on the works of a certain Mr Banksy. I created my first ever proper street art stencil!

And so while I might not quite be the burgeoning expat artist you’re probably expecting (give me a little time you impatient lot), this little achievement does indeed move us on quite nicely to a great little discovery I’ve made in response to the question of what to do in Granada.

Hint: it’s all in the title. And no, Boy George isn’t over here having questionable sex with men and snorting cocaine either. It’s only me doing that.

MYSALA

Some of the creative minds at work at SALA

Now if you have been to Granada already you’ll probably have noticed that there’s a hefty number of hippies artists here that spend a lot of their days living in the caves in Albayzin, making drawings with felt tips pens.

MYSALA doesn’t have much to do with them. Started by a group of German expats, this is a collective with a driving force “simply to entertain and to create” – which, in broader terms, I guess means “dreadlocks optional”.

Just as well then for my angel-headed self that the guys behind MYSALA are a friendly and eclectic bunch welcome to wild-eyed guiris that don’t know a single soul in this fair city. Having helped turn me on to some cool new things since my arrival here in Andalusia, the club has proved a great place to meet new people and do some incredibly cool shit.

Finding them through CouchSurfing (my new best friend by the way), I first came across them during a short film night where I was shown gems like this:

Impressed with the selection, and with a good feeling that I’d already hit on the best of what to do in Granada, I returned eagerly for MYSALA’s stencil day last weekend. There I also got the chance to see Banksy’s excellent film “Through the Gift Shop” once more, only this time chilling on a couch and watching it on a big screen instead of a grainy laptop screen.

Graffin’ Up

With the session kicking off at 12pm I arrived at MYSALA without a single idea of any possible composition. Frank, the stencil-leader (and who I assume is secretly Banksy), had sent us the itinerary beforehand, explaining that he had all the materials and that all we needed to bring really was ourselves. That was the kind of mandate I liked. Very Spanish.

View over Granada from the terrace of MYSALA

Without any ideas of my own Frank then took us (I and two other German students) and showed us some stuff on his iPad. Searching “stencils” he explained to us the kind of stuff we could do and the process of designing something, printing it, cutting it out and then spraying it. Easy enough I thought.

Priming my canvas: job for a cretin

So, confident as ever, I started. First I fired up Photoshop, then I fired up Flickr and Creative Commons. Then the two-hour long procession of coming up with ideas began.

Racking my brain desperately, I originally had the idea of doing something with the My Spanish Adventure logo, before thinking that a little narcissistic (but not enough to change the header to that what you see now).

Then, telling myself to think “Spanish”, I started playing around with the symbol of a bull trying to find something that worked.

Not quite finding that “enough” and being the sadistic bastard that I am, I decided to find an image I’d seen around a year ago of a matador deep throating a bull horn (serves the evil bastard right if you ask me).

Fun but a nightmare stencil!

Needless to say, messing around with the threshold levels and what not I swiftly realized this was going to turn into the stencil from hell.

So then I decided to go simpler and searched for a photo of a matador with his cape flung out and having a man vs clock beast style face-off.

Base of the stencil

Thinking that the beast should be a somewhat comical figure (yet secretly wanting to take the piss out of toreros), I found this image of a cute dog with horns (but actually dressed as a devil) and decided to throw him into the mixer.

The protagonist

Basically my stencil dream was to have something that vaguely resembled this.

The concept

The Process

I thought it was going to be all so easy at the start, priming my canvas and printing off my stencils onto acetate.

Cutting the bad boy out

Where did it all go wrong? The first was the composition. Cutting out the matador was a nightmare as I didn’t consider the islands I had laying inside the shadow.

Then there was the spraying part (I’d never held a spray can before – so that was a cherry-popping moment) that I screwed up by not masking off my canvas properly.

As to how it ended up? Pretty laughable.

Yet the other guys managed some pretty decent designs.

Ah well, at least I know how it all works now plus I can finally I say I made a stencil and did my first real “street art” piece.

Bansky? Wanksy more like.

Disastrous end result

What to do in Granada? It’s worth checking out MYSALA’s range of events. Especially if films, talks and board games are your bag!