Blue Sketchbook Sheet 7
Datum
Richscribble
Graffitis sind Namen, Blatt 7 aus dem blauen Skizzenbuch, Aquarell auf Papier DIN A4, Zülpich 2009
What are Richscribbles?
Richscribble watercolors from johann franki's blue sketchbook follow the label 'Make big what you like'. All original sheets from the sketchbook were denied the contrasting "wash", the final overpainting that introduces the shadows to create depth and highlight the light areas, in order to avoid a restrictive color and design definition. This process is only carried out with editors on the PC during digital processing and thus preserves freedom of interpretation, which only receives its final definition in a separate print file.
Process
A high-resolution scan is made of the rich scribble and the digital result is interpreted and processed.
Now the most beautiful part of the work begins, because coherent, harmonious and exciting details are sought, which have a strong character as cut-outs, details are refined and finally scaled to the size of the DIN A1 format.
In the early years of the new millennium, government routines were (finally) created to make art and culture widely accessible. Since then, state governments have been offering project-based fields of activity for all artists, for example, culture and schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. You apply there with a project and the co-partner, the school that wants to help implement this project. One of my ideas was to offer a project on graffiti, as shown on this sheet. It is my maiden name, “Olsowski,” expressively sketched in graffiti style in rich scribble style watercolor.
Many city dwellers are unaware that the graffiti they see everywhere are “refined” signatures. The artists‘ names are expressed in all kinds of letters, such as Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic characters, but also in traditional runes, meaningful (often Indian) symbols, hieroglyphics, and Asian characters. The signature is the most original form of graffiti; it means “I was/am here” and can be understood as an appropriation of space. In its originality, it corresponds to the essence of Germanic cultures, whose representatives have also left their “graffiti” all over the world with a similar meaning: I was here, I exist, I am powerful—which in turn means nothing other than appropriation of space and land.
It has more contrasting grip, which limits further interpretations, but does not make them impossible. For example, there is a grasshopper in the signature, which is no surprise, as it was the time
of the grasshoppers. Germany did not globalize, but was sold. In 2021, less than 15% of the 40 largest and highest-revenue companies (DAX) were owned by German investors “(Who really owns the DAX companies.)”: https://www.institutional-money.com/news/maerkte/headline/wer-die-dax-unternehmen-wirklich-besitzt-208291/ There were more unemployed people, more broken families, more young people with no prospects, and more work for social workers. Don’t believe the statistics, because all kinds of tricks are used to gloss over the unemployment rate. For example, anyone who is sick or has been forced into a program (how else can you describe it?) is not available to the labor market and is excluded from the unemployment statistics. This locust policy has nothing to do with my name; this sketch is, so to speak, “rehearsing” the 
Graffiti of my name and offers a wealth of interpretable artifacts. It was an initial idea of what I could offer schools and a state program. However, I then decided to use overhead projection, which could not be implemented with a class over a period of six months. That’s why I also offered other projects under the label “Make what you like big,” with the projector work only making up part of it and being used to create templates. This also fit much better with my work, which does not seek to permanently occupy surfaces with manifested color, but rather appropriates space much more intensely and only within a specific time frame by means of live projection.
The graffiti work still came into play, but on sheets of paper several meters in size, sponsored by the packaging industry.
