6266. Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024 (1)

Curtis Hylton, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Barnyard Close, Cheltenham, July 2024
Curtis Hylton, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Barnyard Close, Cheltenham, July 2024

A couple of weekends ago I managed to spend a day at the Cheltenham Paint festival, which was amazing, and organiser Andy ‘Dice’ Davies and his team should be congratulated for building the event into one of the best paint festivals in the UK, and in a town that has quite a small graffiti/street art sub-culture. I took so many pictures of pieces from this year and previous years, that I will be bunching them together in my posts of the festival, due to sheer volume of photographs in my folders.

Curtis Hylton, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Barnyard Close, Cheltenham, July 2024
Curtis Hylton, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Barnyard Close, Cheltenham, July 2024

Here we start with a wonderful piece from Curtis Hilton on the edge of the town, with a signature piece of a bird composed of  flower petals.

DFC1848, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Honeybourne Line tunnel, Cheltenham, July 2024
DFC1848, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, Honeybourne Line tunnel, Cheltenham, July 2024

Next up is a large piece by local artist DFC1848. How magnificently the gold colour on the diver’s helmet picks up the texture of the wall and appears to glisten. Really nice cartoon character fun.

Stephen Quick, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, North Place car park, Cheltenham, July 2024
Stephen Quick, Cheltenham Paint Festival 2024, North Place car park, Cheltenham, July 2024

Finally, for this first burst of three pieces from the festival, a stunner from Stephen Quick, a Bristol Stencil Artist, who I caught up with for a moment. He said the he left the peeling white paint on purpose to add texture and interest to the piece. Such a nice man by the way. More of these Cheltenham compilations to follow.

6265. Purdown (65)

Hardie, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
Hardie, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024

I met Hardie while he was painting at Upfest, and what a friendly fellow he is. Although I think I have only ever posted one or two of his pieces on Natural Adventures, he seemed to know who I was and was familiar with my blog, which was most encouraging.

Hardie, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
Hardie, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024

The Bristol-based artist doesn’t tend to paint the streets all that often the odd shutter or wall here or there but rarely in the popular hotspots, so it was a super surprise to find two of his pieces side by side in the wartime gun emplacement. His characteristic character portraits are made up of a patchwork of crosshatches, creating a really interesting effect. As you can see from these two pieces, Hardie uses a stencil to create his faces, and it also demonstrates how using different colours can create a different look from essentially the same template. What a pleasure to come across these rarities.

6264. M32 roundabout J3 (613)

Zake, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Zake, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

Well this is a bit weird, even by Zake standards, and I am not entirely sure what to make of it. To me the piece looks a bit like a cross between an aristocrat and a spaniel, and once seen, I can’t unsee it. There is something about that pointy nose that I find quite unsettling.

Zake, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Zake, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

Zake has been on fire for a very long time and continues to push boundaries, but also reverts from time to time to his basic round face characters. His USP is working with light and shade to create depth and texture, great example of which can be seen in the eyes and cheeks of this character. Both bizarre and wonderful work from Zake.

6263. M32 roundabout J3 (612)

Dime, Jody and Turoe, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Dime, Jody and Turoe, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

What a wonderful triptych piece on the roundabout which is what I would describe as a unique collaboration between Dime, Jody and Turoe. I am not familiar with Dime and am guessing that he was visiting Bristol and made contact with artists in the city to see who’d like to have a paint. That is how I imagine these kind of things happen.

Dime, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Dime, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

The collaboration starts with a stunning piece of graffiti writing from Dime, with nicely defined letters, beautiful fill colours and a deep 3D drop shadow. The borders are nice and thin and flawless, and the letters are lifted with contrasting orange and red blobby decorations around the outside. The way I think about decorations in a piece is to try and imagine what it would look like without them – often they enrich what might have been something a little ordinary. Decorations are part of the composition, not just an afterthought.

Jody, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Jody, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

Jody has been smashing it all over the place for a sustained period, and I understand from talking to Fade, is really enjoying himself. In this piece he provides the filling in a graffiti writing sandwich and features a cartoon style cool character striking a pose with a cloudy background. I love the sparkle on the sunglasses, a brilliant touch.

Turoe, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Turoe, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

Rounding off the collaboration is a piece of writing from a Bristol legend, Turoe, although I originally thought it was by Soker it is actually a tribute collaboration to Soker who had a cycling accident recently (Thanks to Jay for the background information). If ever you want to know what outstanding graffiti writing looks like, then look no further than Turoe, and this piece demonstrates why. Perfect colour selection, superb interlocking letters without being over-engineered, a deep and contrasting 3D drop shadow and tight border. All the elements are there and they are brought together by a master of his craft. All in all, this is a fabulous and quite unexpected collaboration. We are blessed, and a fabulous tribute.

6262. Ashton Road

The Art of Sok, Ashton Road, Bristol, July 2024
The Art of Sok, Ashton Road, Bristol, July 2024

I think that this piece by The Art of Sok has been around for a little while, but I was pointed in the direction of it by the artist himself, which was lucky, because I don’t visit this spot as a matter of routine. It was painted as part of a collaboration with Smak, which makes sense because they are friends and share a Welsh heritage.

The Art of Sok, Ashton Road, Bristol, July 2024
The Art of Sok, Ashton Road, Bristol, July 2024

The Art of Sok has done here what he does so well; he has created an outstanding comic-book style cartoon of a young man wearing a baseball cap and smoking. The piece is perfectly clean and tight as a nut. Even the smoke coming from the cigarette is stylised, and you can see the two styles meeting where the much more wispy smoke drifts across from Smak’s adjacent piece. Wonderful work from The Art of Sok.

Summer days

.

Summer holidays

a break from school and routine

more time for nature

.

by Scooj

  • On reflecting on the joy of summer holidays when I was a youngster and I could spend time in Cornwall with my grandparents and commune with nature, all day, every day. Happiest of days.

6261. M32 roundabout J3 (611)

Elvs, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Elvs, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

I have been suffering from Elvs withdrawal symptoms… it seems such an age since he regularly visited the city, although this is his second piece painted in July, so there is some hope, I guess. This piece feels like classic Elvs, and I think I know what I mean when I say this, because his writing remains similar from piece to pieces, but there is something here that reminds me of some of his older work.

Elvs, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Elvs, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

The colour selection, including the background colours, just seem to work so well together, with the break in red tones disrupted through the central section. The writing spells ELVS and the letters are created with the thin highlight lines, so typical of Elvs’ work. There is a lovely grey drop shadow with a central vanishing point which rounds the piece off nicely and without which it would all look pretty odd. Excellent stuff from Elvs.

6260. Leonard Lane (48)

Grimes, Leonard Lane, Bristol, July 2024
Grimes, Leonard Lane, Bristol, July 2024

He gets absolutely everywhere, does Grimes, and what a delightful thing that is. He has even made it into the narrow Leonard Lane with this fine chrome piece. You might spot some double yellow lines, that could possibly be the most useless yellow lines in the country, given that it is a dead end, incredibly narrow and if a driver was stupid enough to drive into the lane, they might never get back out again.

Grimes, Leonard Lane, Bristol, July 2024
Grimes, Leonard Lane, Bristol, July 2024

Even when he paints in a single colour, Grimes manages to generate great energy from the form of his letters and in this case some orange ‘flame’ decorations around the perimeter. The letters spell out GRIME and are beautifully finished with a decent 3D drop shadow border. Still more to come from this relative newcomer to Bristol.

6259. M32 roundabout J3 (610)

Rusk, Ulow and Corupt, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Rusk, Ulow and Corupt, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

At first glance, this piece might look like a collaboration between Rusk and Ulow, but regular readers will have seen the figure (by Ulow) on the right before in a collaboration with Hypo a short while ago. What has happened here is Rusk has gone over Hypo’s piece, but worked carefully to retain the Ulow character. It is rather nice to see Corupt getting in on the act too, with a nicely delineated piece sitting atop the others.

Rusk, Ulow and Corupt, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024
Rusk, Ulow and Corupt, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2024

Rusk, who has written RUSKY, has produced a banging piece of graffiti writing. It looks like there are five horizontal colour transitions in the letter fills, with some tidy lines in white and brown breaking things up a little. A tried and tested 3D drop shadow with ‘glowing’ yellow spheres dotted around the place lift the letters nicely. This is a nice and tidy piece from Rusk.

Hypo and Ulow, M32 roundabout, Bristol, June 2024
Hypo and Ulow, M32 roundabout, Bristol, June 2024

6258. M32 Spot (190)

The Art of Sok, M32 Spot, Bristol, July 2024
The Art of Sok, M32 Spot, Bristol, July 2024

The flurry of The Art of Sok pieces continues with this beautiful column portrait. There is a clarity and clean finish that the artist manages to perfect with every single piece he paints. Everything is exactly where he wants it, the lines are crisp and the fills solid and bold.

The Art of Sok, M32 Spot, Bristol, July 2024
The Art of Sok, M32 Spot, Bristol, July 2024

The character in this piece is nicely worked into the tall thin column and beautifully presented on a lilac background. The simplicity and accuracy of The Art of Sok’s work is his USP, and is something we don’t see too much of in Bristol. A really wonderful comic-book style design, with still more to come from the artist…