This post is not about the result. About what came before it, what happened between coats, and the kind of day that stays with you long after the wall is gone.
The wall is painted over now. What remains are a few process shots and the memory of a summer session that had nothing to do with rushing.
Before the wall — the living room, the sketchbook, the MTV
Before a 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 — sometimes a video comes on and derails the whole 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. Around a table, with music on, talking about what's going on the concrete and also about completely unrelated things — 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 viewed from a distance.
The background here ran from black to ultramarine — a gradient that gave the whole wall depth and made the fills in each section read against something that wasn't flat. That decision happened in that room, on paper, before anyone bought the first can.
Coordinating a full-day session meant a phone call to agree the day and a meeting in someone's courtyard to agree everything else. You showed up to 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 doesn't appear in any photo: the conversations about which famous graffiti writers and famous street artists had put out work recently that was worth paying attention to: DOES, SOFLES, DAIM, REVOK, RASKO, MADC, OMEGA, etc. What direction their styles were going, what someone had seen that changed how they thought about a fill or a letter exit or a background approach.
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 videos but through writers who've been watching the same people and have different things to say about what they've seen. You sit in a room, you 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 a single section — it has to account for how it connects to what's being painted next to it. The sketch passes across the table. People mark it up. The version that goes to the wall is better than the version that started the conversation.
On the wall — reading each other without speaking
Painting together on one long wall means adjusting constantly to what's appearing next to you. Someone extends a colour into your section and it's obvious why — you build on it. Someone steps back and the reason is clear without asking — they're waiting for an edge that needs to settle before the next layer goes on top.
The writers here had enough sessions behind them that these adjustments happened without discussion. Not because anyone was especially skilled — because they'd painted together enough times that the wall became a shared language rather than separate statements happening in parallel. That's what graffiti session chemistry actually is: not talent, but accumulated time in the same space doing the same thing.
The breaks were part of this too. Stepping back from the wall. Looking at the whole thing from distance. Talking — about the session, about something else entirely, about nothing in particular. These moments are when you see the piece rather than just the section you're working on. 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 that 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 for a commissioned wall.
The cost question is the one that never has a short answer. It depends on size, on surface condition, on complexity — a background roll over a clean prepared wall is different from a multi-writer production with gradient fills and detailed work done in stages. It depends on how many writers are involved, on whether access equipment is needed, on 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 decision for a summer graffiti session has to account for the light the wall will be seen in. Full summer sun flattens certain colour combinations and pushes others forward. Warm colours — oranges, acid greens, yellows — read with energy against a dark background in direct sun. Cool colours — blues, purples — function as depth and give the eye somewhere to rest.
The background here graduated from black to ultramarine. In summer light, that gradient does something specific: the black anchors the bottom of the wall and the ultramarine opens upward, giving the whole composition a sense of atmosphere that a flat background doesn't. Each writer's section sat against that gradient differently depending on where on the wall they were working.
MTN 94 for the fills and detail work. Colour choices were partly planned and partly adjusted on the day — what reads correctly 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 determines your options and planning far enough ahead that those options are the right ones.
The chemistry nobody photographs
Graffiti is not only what ends up on the wall. It's the apartment beforehand, the phone call to agree the day, the table with coffee and paper, the argument about whether someone's recent work holds up, the sketch that gets marked up and improved before anyone buys the first can. It's the adjustments made in silence on the wall because you've painted with these people enough to read what they're doing. It's the stranger who stops and asks what this costs — and that question never has a short answer. It's also the conversation 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.
The wall is painted over. The session isn't. That's what the chemistry nobody photographs actually is — the part of graffiti that doesn't disappear when the wall does.
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