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In parched parkland
wild flowers battle for space
small in the grand scheme…
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by Scooj

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In parched parkland
wild flowers battle for space
small in the grand scheme…
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by Scooj

Following my last post featuring a couple of wheatpaste drawings by Bethcub recently, I had a nice Instagram message from the artist, who had read the post and told me a little bit more about these wheatpastes. Bethcub confirmed that they are one-off charcoal drawings from her life drawing class, which she fixes and pastes up straight after the class. It is always great to know a little bit more about the art on our streets.

In this sketch, the model is perching (rather awkwardly) on a stool as if in transition. Some lovely curves, and an unusual position, make this a fascinating study. Seeing things like this, make me excited about retirement and a pledge I have made to myself to start art lessons. Why wait? You might ask – not enough hours in the day, I might reply.

The concrete slabs at Purdown can be quite challenging to say the least, the stand-alone edifices limit the scope and dimensions of the piece, and don’t lend themselves to writers. There is also the matter of a small herd of goats that tend to enjoy ‘scrambling’ around all the concrete structures. Jest Soubriquet (@likes_wan_tu) has absolutely made the most of this slab, showcasing his superb work.

Jest Soubriquet has absolutely smashed it with this colourful portrait piece, which really stands out as something special. It is great that dog-walkers, runners, families and so on, who enjoy Purdown, get to see great art like this for free, in an interesting context of WWII history, nature and street art. A supreme piece from the master of colour.

Oust is a graffiti writer who is probably a little under-represented on Natural Adventures, which might reflect the fact that he doesn’t paint all that frequently, and it is possible that I miss the odd piece altogether. He seems to have been in a rich vein of form recently though, and this is one of at least three pieces I have found recently.

This birthday tribute piece for Sled One is absolutely outstanding in my view. Oust has used great colours, orange and green always work well together, and his classic style is full of great fills, depth and movement. Although the piece is busy, it isn’t cluttered. This is a classy piece of graffiti writing from Oust.

A little bit of a landmark this morning, with my seven thousandth street art blog post, which is quite a few really. When I set out on this adventure in 2015, the blog was set up to share my diary and log from a life-changing experience I had, working with the fisheries department in the Falkland Islands.
In the early days, I simultaneously started to notice the street art and graffiti around me in my adopted home, Bristol. I started posting the odd piece, mainly because nobody else was at that time, and I wanted to share what I saw and found out with others, and to lay down an archive of this ephemeral art form. And here we are, still going strong and with a bigger street art scene than ever before.

It is fitting that this milestone piece is by Kid Crayon, because it was his unusual and surreal wheatpaste portraits that originally captured my imagination and motivated me to blog about this stuff. I was lucky enough to catch up with Kid Crayon and Tera while they were painting this wall, but alas, Tera’s piece was painted over by the time I returned to get clean photographs. Kid Crayon has produced a fabulous piece with some great colour fills discrete to each letter and a wonderful one-eyed character making up the ‘o’. The floating crayon in front of the character’s mouth is a signature motif used by Kid Crayon for at least a decade. Splendid stuff.

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Deep flower border
swirling sea of green and pink
and a large ladybird
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by Scooj

When I see painted toadstools, I immediately think of Lis (Le Imposter Designs), but something held me back from posting this one under her name, because it wasn’t signed, which she usually does, and there was something that just didn’t quite fit her style. A little bit of research led me to Dobz, who also, it seems, has a bit of a thing for fungi.

I don’t know much about Dobz other than a few mushroom pieces that have appeared in the last month or so about the place. I can’t say whether they are a resident of Bristol or just passing through and dropping a few ‘shrooms en route. These day glow toadstools are beautifully presented, with great multi-tone shading and thick vibrant borders. Really eye-catching stuff up at Purdown.

Unsigned pieces are always difficult to identify, but I have hit upon a bit of reverse engineering in my thinking; as well as looking for clues in the lettering or style of the piece, I also think about which artists I know that never sign their work, and this often leads me to a small pool of artists to investigate. Endz is one of those artists, and closer scrutiny of the style (which varies considerably) helps to draw conclusions.

Endz also paints under another name in Bristol, but likes to keep the two identities separate. The sketchy style, which some might interpret as untidy, is deliberate and feels like it might have dropped out of a scrap book or something. The grey tones of the letters are interspersed with small blocks of orange that jazz the whole piece up a bit along with an orange border. Interesting work from Endz, and certainly a little different from the mainstream.

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Hoverfly heaven
every floret head a table
each flower, a glass
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by Scooj

I think I have probably laboured the point in blog posts passim about my aversion to brown tones in street art, but it seems to be the ‘flavour of the month’ at the moment, so I will just have to get used to it. Strictly speaking, this piece by Werm isn’t brown, but it has that brown complexion to it.

Colour selection aside, this is a marvellous technical piece of graffiti writing, spelling WERM, but cunningly designed to almost disappear as letters and reappear as shapes instead. The spheres around the outside soften the hard edges of the writing in this beautifully presented piece, painted as part of Wispa’s birthday celebration paint jam.