.
Sticky hooked seed heads
bring out my inner mischief
asking to be thrown
.
by Scooj
Greater burdock
7889. Cumberland Basin
Another classic piece from Nice One, who, it has to be said has generally had quite a quiet few months painting on the streets. It can be hard to know sometimes what impacts on the peaks and troughs in activity from different artists, and one can only hope it is for good reasons.
This combnination piece cleanly separates a superb portrait sketch from the beautifully picked out and typical letters ‘Nice One’. The portrait piece resembles a bust or statue and the sketch-like quality of the lined feels like this piece has been directly lifted out of an artist’s workbook. To create that greyscale pencil drawing look at this scale using spray paints is fantastically skillful and perfectly executed by Nice One. Outstanding.
7888. M32 Cycle path (322)
About 20 years ago I bought a Nike sweatshirt which didn’t have the tick logo, just the word Nike, and it was the exact same colours as the letter fills in this piece by Mage. This piece reminds me of that top, which I was very fond of, and I can’t unsee it in this piece.
Sometimes Mage’s execution can look a little rushed, but not in this piece, everything is absolutely on-point. The clean dynamic two-colour fill is attraxctively presented, and supported with a whuite drop shadow and fine black border. Some greeny-yellow dusting creates an interface between the letters and the former occupant of this spot. I am not too sure about the colour selection of this, but I am splitting hairs a bit. A very nice tidy piece of writing from Mage.
7887. St Mark’s Avenue (14)
Typically, when I think of an avenue I have in my mind’s eye a semi-rural tree-lined straight road leading to or from a special town or estate. St Mark’s Avenue brings that idyll instantly back down to earth. It is a narrow back alley, full of bins and until recently rather grubby and neglected, but thanks to a small local community group, it has been transformed with planters for pollinators and some rather fetching street art from local artists along the way.
This piece, by Bethan Richards, an artist I haven’t come across before, fits the allocated space so very well. The illustrative design style reminds me a little of Zoe Power, a Bristol artist who is well known on the mural scene. There are lots of nature connection themes in an urban landscape, which really captures the essence of the improvements being bade by community groups in this area. Lovely work.
7886. M32 roundabout J3 (790)
Minto has had a great summer, creating some truly memorable pieces around Bristol, and of such a high quality too. His distinctive style has been carried through all of them and this is no exception.
The heavily disguised letters, spelling, of course, MINTO, are beautifully embellished with swirls, patterns, lines and colour, but all seemingly beautifully balanced and interconnected. Midway through, there is the inclusion of a small character, wearing a helmet with goggles and smoking a cigarette. Such mini-characters often organically emerge fom Minto’s work, augmenting the busy mix. Another very nice piece from the artist.
Thursday Doors – 3 September 2026
Doors 369 – Street art and graffiti doors
I have once again found myself very short of time, which is likely to be the case until I go on holiday in mid-September. The upshot… another post of previously published photographs from the street art side of my blog that feature doors, often in the loosest possible interpretation or squeezed to the side of a photograph as an incidental door, but doors nonetheless. Hope you enjoy this selection of doors that first appeared on Natural Adventures in June – August last year:
So that’s it for this week – I’ll try and find some time to get a bit more organised for next week – I have some greart doors lined up, but not quite ready to go. Have a great weekend when it comes.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s weekly Thursday Doors post and his Sunday recap.
7885. L Dub (92)
If you ever want to get a feel for wildstyle graffiti wrtiting at its best, you don’t need to go much further than the L Dub spot, which at any one time will host several superb examples, which tend to be left very much alone by taggers, who rarely venture to such out of the way places.
This gorgeous piece by Turoe is a great example opf what I’m talking about. His elaborate letters are perfectly filled with a small but strong red drop shadow and clean white border. There is a lilac cloudy background which frames the writing nicely. Simply classy.
7884. Greenbank (191)
It would seem that Conrico rather likes this particular spot, as the previous piece here was his fabulous two-panel cats work, featured here a few weeks back. Unfortunately the cats piece got tagged and didn’t last very long and he replaced it with this eye-catching portrait piece.
The portrait is more stylised than many of his pieces, both in terms of the rich flesh tones and the bold use of those tones to build depth through light and shadow. I like the proportions that Conrico has presented in this piece, with two thirds of the space occupied by a seascape, bringing more focus on the subject to the right. As ever, nicer work.
Autumn creep
.
Quite snuck up on me
early fall of withered leaves
masking autumn’s start
.
by Scooj
7883. Cumberland Basin
A quick jaunt back into my June archive revealed this beauty from Solar on the long wall at Cumberland Basin. I would offer my subjective view and say that Solar’s work this year has risen to the next level, and he is turning out some outstanding work.
Solar’s unusual and anti-style work is perversely becoming quite conventional, simply because he has established himself and made a mark. This is no bad thing, because he retains his identity and developing style. In this wonderfully fragmented piece, the outline is incomplete, and the fills drift way beyond the boundaries. A sense of order is maintained by the pink and magenta decorations that have stuck to the script and frame the piece beautifully. Cool work.
Natural adventures 