This post isn't about the result. It's about the graffiti process around it: what came before, what happened between coats on a 20-metre park wall, and the kind of summer crew session that stays with you long after the wall is gone.
The wall is painted over now. What's left are a few process shots and the memory of a session that had nothing to do with rushing.
Before the wall — the living room, the sketchbook, the MTV
Before any graffiti session worth remembering, there's always a version of the same scene. Someone's apartment. A table with coffee and paper everywhere. MTV running in the background, and sometimes a video comes on and derails the conversation for ten minutes. A sketchbook gets passed around. Someone disagrees with something in it and grabs a pen to show what they mean.
This is where the session actually starts. Not on the wall, but around a table, with music on, talking about what's going on the concrete and about completely unrelated things too: problems at work, something funny that happened, a relationship that's going well, plans for the weekend. And then back to the work. Whose section goes where. How the background connects. What colour logic holds twenty metres together when you see it from a distance.
The background ran from black to ultramarine, a gradient that gave the whole wall depth and made each section's fills read against something that wasn't flat. That decision was made in that room, on paper, before anyone bought the first can.
Organising a full-day session meant a phone call to agree on the day and a meeting in someone's courtyard to agree on everything else. You arrived at the wall having already spent time with the people you were painting with. The work started warmer because of it.
The graffiti process — what the photos don't show
The preparation that never appears in a photo: conversations about which famous graffiti writers had put out work worth paying attention to. DOES, SOFLES, DAIM, REVOK, RASKO, MADC, OMEGA and others. Where their styles were going, what someone had seen that changed how they thought about a fill, a letter exit or a background.
These conversations are part of the graffiti process in a way that's hard to document. They're where influence travels. Not through tutorials or YouTube, but through writers who've been watching the same people and have different things to say about them. You sit in a room, argue about whether someone's new work is as strong as their old work, and without noticing it you've updated how you think about your own.
This is also where the sketch gets made. A sketch for a long wall is different from a sketch for one section: it has to account for how it connects to what's being painted next to it. The sketch passes across the table and people mark it up. The version that goes to the wall is better than the one that started the conversation.
On the wall — reading each other without speaking
Painting together on one long wall means constantly adjusting to what's appearing next to you. Someone extends a colour into your section and it's obvious why, so you build on it. Someone steps back and the reason is clear without asking: they're waiting for an edge to settle before the next layer goes on.
The writers here had enough sessions together that these adjustments happened without discussion. Not because anyone was especially skilled, but because they'd painted together so often that the wall became a shared language instead of separate statements side by side. That's what crew chemistry in graffiti really is: not talent, but time spent in the same space doing the same thing.
The breaks were part of it too. Stepping back. Looking at the whole wall from a distance. Talking about the session, about something else, about nothing in particular. Those are the moments you see the piece instead of just your own section. They're not interruptions. They're part of the process.
Questions from strangers about graffiti
A long wall takes long enough that people walking past stop. They watch. Sometimes they ask questions.
The questions follow a pattern any writer painting in public will recognise. How long does this take? Did you study art? What does it say? How much would something like this cost on my wall?
The cost question never has a short answer. It depends on size, on the condition of the surface, on complexity. A background roll on a clean, prepared wall is different from a multi-writer production with gradient fills and details done in stages. It depends on how many writers are involved, whether access equipment is needed, whether the brief has restrictions. Writers rarely quote the same number twice, because the variables are never the same twice. The honest answer is: it depends, and if you want to know properly, the conversation starts with a description of the wall.
What the cost question is really asking is whether this is worth something. The answer to that one is always yes.
Colour in summer light — from black to ultramarine
The palette for a summer graffiti session has to account for the light the wall will be seen in. Full summer sun flattens some colour combinations and pushes others forward. Warm colours, oranges, acid greens and yellows, read with energy against a dark background in direct sun. Cool colours, blues and purples, work as depth and give the eye somewhere to rest.
The background here went from black to ultramarine. In summer light that gradient does something specific: black anchors the bottom of the wall and ultramarine opens upward, giving the whole composition an atmosphere a flat background doesn't. Each writer's section sat against the gradient differently, depending on where on the wall they were.
MTN 94 for the fills and details. Colours were partly planned and partly adjusted on the day, because what reads right on paper in an apartment reads differently on a wall in afternoon sun. Part of the skill is knowing that the first can you buy decides your options, and planning far enough ahead that those options are the right ones. More on building a palette in colorful graffiti.
The chemistry nobody photographs
Graffiti isn't only what ends up on the wall. It's the apartment beforehand, the phone call to agree on the day, the table with coffee and paper, the argument about whether someone's recent work holds up, the sketch that gets marked up before anyone buys a can. It's the silent adjustments on the wall because you've painted with these people enough to read what they're doing. It's the stranger who asks what this costs. It's also the talk about who's been bombing the neighbourhood lately, whose throw-up appeared overnight on a wall nobody expected, and whether the audacity of it earns respect even when the logic doesn't. Some writers are reckless in a way that's hard to defend and impossible not to respect. That tension is part of the culture too. More on that in graffiti rules.
The wall is painted over. The session isn't. That's the chemistry nobody photographs: the part of graffiti that doesn't disappear when the wall does.
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