How To Draw Graffiti Letters For Beginners - Art By Ro

Graffiti Art Drawing: Layout and Design Basics

In this art tutorial, you’ll learn how to draw graffiti letters in a way that looks balanced, interesting, and visually strong on the page. Rather than focusing on individual letters, this lesson shows you how to bring graffiti lettering together as a complete design. How to arrange the letters, choose colors that work well together, and add a background that supports the overall look.

I originally created this lesson to help beginners stay engaged while learning graffiti lettering, and it’s since been used by both art teachers and adults learning to draw for themselves. If you’ve ever felt unsure about how to make your graffiti sketches look more finished or cohesive, this approach will help you think through the design step by step without feeling overwhelmed.

Graffiti Art that Gets Noticed

There are many challenges involved in creating graffiti artwork. The purpose of creating graffiti art is to get noticed. So now you have to decide how to do that with only a piece of paper and some markers. What will be in the background? What colors will be used? How will you make the letters stand out?

Do I want the letters to stand out? Which letter style will you use for your graffiti drawing? There is a lot to consider when drawing graffiti art. But there is a lot to be gained in advancing your drawing skills.

So if you’re ready to learn how to do graffiti on paper for beginners, let’s grab some art supplies and get started.

* Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. This means I receive small commissions for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.

Art Supplies

• Sketchbook
• Red Col-Erase pencil
• Art Eraser
• Black outlining pen
• Alcohol Markers
• Colored Pencils
• Graffiti alphabet sheets
• Free Graffiti Guide
• Graffiti Verite’ 4 DVD

These are the supplies I used for this tutorial. There are many acceptable supplies you can use. It’s really just a personal preference. As you develop your own style, you’ll find which art supplies you prefer to use.

How to Draw Graffiti

Before you get started on the actual drawing, there are a few things you need to think about.

• What word or name will you be drawing
• How will the letters “flow” on the page
• Where is the center point of your word or name
• What style of letters you will use

For this graffiti art tutorial I’ll be using the word dream. I typically do my graffiti style art in a hard cover sketchbook. I have some cheaper ones for practice drawings and some nicer ones for my finished drawings. This is the one I’ll be using today. I picked it up in a Barnes and Noble bookstore on their clearance shelf.

If you’re going to use markers, make sure the paper has a smoother tooth. They seem to take markers better than the rougher papers. And the smoother paper doesn’t destroy the tips.

Prevent Bleed Through

In all of my sketchbooks I keep a piece of scrap paper between the page I’m drawing on and the one that is directly behind it. This prevents any of the markers from bleeding through onto the next piece of drawing paper. This extra piece of paper stays in the sketchbook and simply gets moved to a new location after each drawing.

Graffiti Drawing Layout

When getting ready to draw your graffiti art, you first need to decide how you want the letters to flow on the page. Will they be tight against the bottom of the page? Do you want them to curve in at the center or maybe curve out? Should they go diagonally across the page?

There are several options. Many more than what I’ve shown here.

Graffiti Drawing Guidelines

I’ve decided on a diagonal flow for my letters. Lightly draw in some guidelines where your letters will need to go. I’ll usually use a red Prismacolor Col-Erase pencil because it doesn’t smudge like a regular pencil will. However, today I’m using a regular pencil so it’s easier for you to see.

Begin by drawing some guidelines for how you want your letters to flow on the paper. My letters will be drawn roughly between these two lines.

When drawing out my letters, I like to fill as much of my paper as possible.

For this reason you’ll need to know where the middle of your word is. For the word “dream”, the letter E is the middle. If your name or word has an even number of letters, your middle point will be between two letters.

The next step is to divide your drawing area up into enough sections for each letter. Since the word dream has five letters, there are five section on the page. This will be your guideline for your letters. It will give you a rough estimate of how big, or small, each letter needs to be to fit on your paper.

Drawing Graffiti Letters

I usually begin with the middle of the word, which is the letter E. The first thing I do is draw my graffiti letter in the center of the page. When doing this, I try to stretch it to the top and bottom of the guidelines I drew in for how I want my letters to flow.

Don’t worry too much about your letter going outside of it’s section. The main goal of graffiti art is to create something interesting to look at. Overlapping the letters will help you achieve that goal more easily.

If you need help designing individual letters, check out this post on How to Draw Stylized Letters. In this tutorial I break down how to draw each letters using guides and how to make your letters more interesting.

Move onto the next letter. At this point, you can work on the letter directly to the right or the left. It’s really a personal preference. I drew the letter A next.

How to Overlap Your Graffiti Letters

As you’re drawing out your word you’ll need to decide how your letters will overlap one another. This is partially personal preference, and partially determined by the letters themselves.

If you cover up the key parts of a letter, it will make it difficult to tell what letter it is, and therefore, make it harder to read your word.

Continue working your way through each letter of your word. The order in which I’m drawing my letters is my own personal preference. The overall look of your drawing will vary depending on how you draw out your letters.

How you overlap them, the size variation, and the shape of your letters will help create your own personal style to your artwork.

I decided to change the overall flow of my letters when I was drawing the A and the M because I didn’t like how it originally looked. This is part of the drawing and decision making process involved with creating art. Don’t feel like you have to always stick 100% with your original ideas.

Finish Your drawing by adding in the letter D. The biggest struggle I had at this point is deciding how I will overlap the D and R because of the way they both have the upper loop in the letter. After giving it some thought, I decided to let the R overlap the E, and the D to overlap the R.

Clean Up Your Graffiti Drawing

If you are satisfied with how your letters look, it’s time to clean your drawing up a bit.

Erase any lines that don’t need to be there, and darken up any lines that need to stand out a little more.

Graffiti Outline

After cleaning up your rough drawing, it’s time to go in with a black outlining pen and start working on your finished work of art. When all of your letters have been outlined, use a big eraser to get rid of your pencil lines.

It’s a good idea to give the pen a couple of minutes to dry before using the eraser to avoid smudging the ink.

After you have your word outlined, go back in and thicken up your lines a bit. How thick you make them is, once again, a personal preference. You can make them all the same thickness, or vary the thickness some. It’s up to you.

How to Draw Graffiti Letters Step by Step with Markers

Now it’s time to add some color to your graffiti drawing. This is where the fun really begins. And the challenges. Let’s see how to draw graffiti letters step by step using markers.

I went with warm colors for my graffiti letters.

You can use any color scheme you want to use. It’s best if you have at least a basic understanding of color theory. You want to pick colors that work together in your graffiti art.

Below is the marker set I used for creating this drawing. Because this tutorial focuses on graffiti for beginners, I wouldn’t recommend purchasing expensive markers as that can really add up.

Four markers were used for the letters (yellow blaze, summer melon, sunset orange, fandango pink). And they were used in that order. These are all included in the Bic Intensity 24 pack.

Note: When I first created this tutorial, I used different markers than I recommend today. I currently (2026) suggest using Ohuhu markers. They are a good quality marker with a wide range of colors. And the price is very reasonable. I also like their outlining pens and marker pads as well.

Blending Markers

Begin adding the blaze yellow at the top of your letter. Work on one letter at a time because you want the markers to stay “wet” while you’re working on it or they won’t blend together.

Next, add the summer melon. Be sure to overlap your colors. Use the yellow where the two colors meet and blend them together.

Now add in the sunset orange. Again, go back in with the previous color (summer melon) and blend the colors together where they meet.

Finally, add in some fandango pink. Don’t forget to blend the colors together using the sunset orange.

There are so many options when choosing how to finish your letters. Which colors you use and how you add color is entirely up to you. However, I would suggest using some kind of color theme when you are just starting out.

Don’t forget – The more you practice, the better you will get.

After doing a few of these you’ll notice the decision making will start getting easier as well. You’ll start to know your next move sooner and become more confident in what you are doing.

If you need help blending markers check out our post called How to Blend Markers for Beginners.

The next thing I did was go in with my black pen and thicken up the outline around the edges of the letters. I left the lines where the letters overlap the way they were. I’ll add a shadow to these areas later on.

Drawing a Graffiti Background

After giving it some thought, I decided to go back in with black and fill in the enclosed areas of my letters. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use black or purple for the insides. I went with the black.

For the background cool colors were used. Because this is a graffiti lesson for beginners, I kept the background pretty simple. There are an endless number of options for the background. From very simple to extremely complex.

Have some fun with it and be creative. The more you practice, the more creative you will be. Brick walls make really good backgrounds for graffiti art. Take a look at our post on drawing brick walls for a full step by step tutorial.

Add Shadows and Highlights to Your Graffiti Drawing

The final step is to add some shadows and highlights. Again, lots of choices here. You can use black and white colored pencils for this. The colored pencils lay on top of the marker nicely and shows up well.

Below is what my final drawing looks like. I added some little specks in the white areas to break it up a bit… and because I dropped one of the markers on my page which left a couple of dots.

Happy accidents, as Bob Ross always said. It turned out ok, but I should have made the inside of the letters purple instead of black, or added more black around the edges to balance it out more.

A great way to improve all of the skills you learned here today is with a graffiti drawing challenge. And you can do the challenge at your own pace. Click here to learn how to improve your art skills with a graffiti drawing challenge.

How to Draw Graffiti Letters for Beginners

I hope you enjoyed learning how to draw graffiti letters step by step. There will be more many more graffiti lessons coming up in the near future.

Take a look around the site and you’ll find several graffiti letters tutorials that focus on drawing individual letters in various styles. They’re great graffiti for beginners tutorials.

Get your free graffiti guide below

If you do a quick search on Google for “graffiti blackbook”, you’ll find some really cool graffiti drawings that I’m sure will inspire you. Happy drawing and don’t forget to practice!

More Graffiti Tutorials

• Ribbon Name Drawing
• How to Draw a Graffiti Letter M
• Learn to Draw Block Letters
• How to Draw 3D Graffiti Letters
• Learn to Add a Shadow to Your Lettering Art

Roshanda

Roshanda is an art education blogger who is on a mission to coach and encourage as many aspiring artists as possible through the use of her blog. Learn more about her on the About Me page and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.