Spray Your First Graffiti on a Bushwick Studio Wall
An hour of aerosol art in a Brooklyn studio where the walls are the canvas and first-timers are the whole audience.
Every surface inside the Graff Tours studio on Meserole Street has been painted over more times than anyone has counted. A wall that is already covered is a wall you cannot spoil, which is most of why the hour works for people who have never held a can. One working New York graffiti artist runs the room. The teaching roster comes from the city's own writers, including Staff 161, who painted the first character ever to appear on a New York subway car in 1973.
Paint, gloves and studio time come with the booking. Wear the clothes you would wear to run errands.
The class runs one hour. Graff Tours publishes afternoon starts at 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM, and the time you select at checkout is the one that holds. Booking confirms instantly, which helps on an afternoon you are still deciding about at breakfast.
Graffiti Art Lesson in BrooklynGraff Tours · One hour · Paint, gloves and an NYC graffiti artist includedaffiliate.klook.comWhat the hour actually looks like
Graff Tours describes the arc as fill-ins to masterpieces, which is a fair account of sixty minutes. You start with a word, usually your own name, and spend longer on its shape than you expect to. Paint only comes out once the letters are settled, and that order is the one thing separating a piece from a smear.
A can behaves nothing like a marker. The line widens as you move in, and it keeps travelling for a beat after your finger lifts. The artist stays at your shoulder, catching the grip before the line goes wrong.
The hour goes fast. More than one reviewer finished wanting another thirty minutes. Decide on your word before you arrive and more of the hour goes on the wall.
Inside the studio, and the street outside it
The studio is a working room. Racks of cans line one wall, drop sheets cover the floor, and the layers behind you hold years of other people's first attempts.
Outside, the same company runs street art walking tours of these blocks, so the staff know what is currently up. The walls nearby are the everyday kind, painted and repainted by whoever turns up. One sits at 325 Bushwick Avenue on the elementary school it was made for, by LEAF, who also teaches classes in the studio.
The Bushwick Collective, the curated stretch most visitors picture, is two L stops east at Jefferson Street, roughly twenty minutes on foot. A Bushwick resident started it in 2012 by giving up his own wall and talking neighbors into lending theirs, and the block party each June brings a fresh round of painting. Walk it before your class and you turn up with a head full of letterforms.
What the ticket covers
Graff Tours supplies the paint, the gloves, the studio time and the artist. You bring nothing.
The studio sells the lesson in three shapes, and they are not the same afternoon:
- Wall freestyle, where you paint directly on the studio walls the way real graffiti goes up
- Wall freestyle plus a 12 by 24 inch art panel you carry out
- Wall freestyle plus a 5 by 4 foot gessoed canvas that rolls up for the trip home
Check which of the three your booking covers before you travel. The base lesson leaves your work on the studio wall. Children 8 and younger need an adult with them, and the studio counts that adult as a second ticket.
The wall and the panel are different jobs. A 12 by 24 inch frame asks for fine, controlled lines, which is the part an hour does not build. One parent wrote in a Google review: "It was also quite difficult for beginners or young children to design graffiti on a small canvas. I would recommend: just stick to creating graffiti on the walls for fun!" Another visitor carried a fresh panel home through rain and lost the artwork on the way. If the forecast is wet, pick the wall.
Before you go
Casual everyday clothes are the instruction. Graff Tours says the experience stays clean for people who listen to the instructor, and gloves are handed out. Klook lists the class in English and asks that you arrive ahead of the start.
The studio sits on the second floor, and the stairs up are narrow and steep. The street door also takes some finding. One reviewer called the search a mini-adventure and suggested arriving ten to fifteen minutes early. Take the suggestion.
📍 The class meets at 282 Meserole Street in Bushwick. Montrose Avenue on the L is the closest stop, about a five-minute walk.
Cancellation terms travel with the Klook booking and appear at checkout. Read them there.
Then it is one hour, a can in your hand, and a wall that has taken worse.