Bags – Natural adventures

7237. St Werburghs tunnel (530)

Bags and Biers, St Werburghs, Bristol, October 2025

This is a great collaboration from time-honoured members of the No Frills crew, Bags and Biers (WD40). Bags has been out an about a fair bit this year, but Biers is rediscovering his mojo (I hope), having had a period of poor motivation with respect to painting walls.

Bags, St Werburghs, Bristol, October 2025

To the left, the familiar BAGS letters are filled in the two-colour way that he appears to like doing, and he includes some colour coordinated spots for decoration. The tear drops surrounding the piece add movement, looking like cartoon perspiration, if that makes any sense at all. The white highlights add just that little bit of depth to lift the letters.

Biers, St Werburghs, Bristol, October 2025

At last Biers has painted a combination piece, something that is a bit of a trademark of his, and he includes the iconic comic character Inspector Gadget, although in this piece he calls him ‘Inspect Her Gadgets’ whilst examining a sex toy. The letters spell out WD40 and are really nicely presented. If you are wondering why I call him Biers, it is because that is what he was writing when I first encountered him. Below is the first of his pieces I ever posted.

Biers, M32 roundabout, Bristol, February 2017

7157. River Avon (92)

I said a week or two back that I would try to feature Bags from the No Frills crew more often, and true to my word, here is another piece by the graffiti writer. I am writing this post yesterday, because at the time of publishing, I will be somewhere in the air between Bristol and Madeira.

As with the last piece I featured by Bags, He has separated the BA and GS of his letters with different colour regimes, a device that sems to work rather well for him. The solid fills are decorated minimally by some reversed out circles and a white star. Bags has added a little extra interest with some red zigzags that look like they have come from an oscilloscope (does that age me?). Addressing underrepresentation one day at a time.

Please excuse the next week of posts, they are likely to be a little haphazard while I am on holiday.

7111. River Avon (89)

I have a great many pieces by Bags in my archives, but have only posted a fraction of them. I keep meaning to post more from this stalwart of the No Frills crew, but somehow never seem to do it. This is a recent piece, one of several, in which he has played with bilaterally splitting his letters into two colour sections, with the BA in one colour and the GS in another.

He has painted so many of these, that his letters must come very easily, and he tends to keep the general shape of his letters consistent from piece to piece. The dark blue and red colours work well, and I rather like the half-and-half appearance. I’ll try to post more of his pieces in the future.

6216. M32 Spot (188)

Minto and Bags, M32 Spot, Bristol, July 2024

I am pretty sure that these pieces from Minto and Bags are part of a collaboration, rather than ones painted in isolation that happen to be next to one another. There is definitely some interaction from the Bags piece that overlaps onto the Minto side, but not necessarily vice versa.

Unlike most of his recent ‘deconstruction’ pieces, Minto has opted for a full size portrait, with the only writing being the ‘Minto’ on the subject’s hat. It comes across as a bit of a quick one, and may have been a dregs piece, because the fills aren’t particularly solid. Certainly this is Minto showing a slightly different side to his work, and for some reason it is a very memorable – maybe it is the green, maybe the hat… who knows?

Bags is a woefully underrepresented artist in Natural Adventures, and I think the only way I could rectify that would be to go through my archives and present several mini-galleries, just to catch up a bit. I think that Bags enjoys collaborating a lot, especially with his No Frills friends such as Biers and Slim Pickings. His letters are always recognisable and presented in roughly the same format, with the fills representing the main differences from piece to piece.

3970. L Dub (30)

Birthday paint jams are a bit of a thing, and recently there seem to have been a spate of them. They are a great excuse for a bunch of friends to get out and paint together, and for people like me offer another raft of fabulous work all in one location. The perennial difficulty is having the capacity tom post about them all (an impossible task).

The birthday in question belonged to DJ Perks and these three pieces are by Turoe, Slim Pickings (TES) and Bags. The old-school character given some contemporary treatment is by Turoe and just in case we were any doubt, DJ Perks was 50.

Slim Pickings, L Dub, Bristol, September 2021

Slim Pickings is metronome-like in his regularity, turning out these TES pieces time and again. Unfortunately these days, more of them end up in my archives than being posted, such is the massive turnover in Bristol at the moment. Bright bold colours and sharp lines, just what you’d expect.

A rather overlooked writer in Natural Adventures is Bags, probably because he doesn’t paint quite as often as his contemporaries, but that is no excuse really. This is a fine piece of writing, neatly done and kind of fun too with the hand bursting out of the ‘B’. All in all a lovely tribute to DJ Perks, who loves painting in this spot. More from this paint jam to come.

3441. Dean Lane skate park (383)

Biers, Bags and a bed! Dean Lane sometimes plays host to the occasional fly-tipper, which I have to confess is a pet hate of mine. The kind of person who thinks that it is OK to simply throw their waste away in the street or on other people’s property are the scum of the earth. Inconsiderate and stupid, I have no time for them – rant over.

Biers, Dean Lane, Bristol, December 2020

This is a rather colourful collaboration from No Frills stable mates Biers and Bags. On the left is a really beautifully worked BIERS split into three distinct horizontal frills with serrated edges, which must have taken a bit of time to do. The whole thing is bounded by a bright yellow 3D shadow.

The other half of the collaboration is by Bags who is completely under-represented on Natural Adventures. I don’t really know why that is, I have plenty of his pieces in my archives, but rarely post them – I might have to remedy that. Bags has gone for a diagonal split across his letters. The yellow half works really well, but the red half looks like he ran out of paint and the fill resembles that of a throw up, which is a pity. A nice collaboration on one of the best walls in Bristol.

2302. Dean Lane skate park (227)

Recently on the long wall at Dean Lane skate park was this No Frills extravaganza from Biers, Slim Pickings and Bags. It seems that these guys, and they are not alone, are well and truly out of hibernation and painting furiously at every opportunity.

On the left is a wonderful ‘creature from the wack (sic) lagoon’ by Biers set in his ‘O Yeah’ writing. I do like his character-writing work and the shapes of his letter style is pretty unique, and I know how hard he works on drafting these pieces because he shares his sketches regularly on Instagram. It is great to see them come to fruition.

Slim Pickings, Dean Lane, Bristol, June 2019

In the middle of this collaboration is the distinctive ‘Tes’ of Slim Pickings forever reaching out for perfection in this form of writing. I don’t think I have ever knowingly seen anything by him that isn’t a version of this. A master of consistency and colour combinations.

Finally on the right is a piece by an artist I still know nothing about other than that he is in the No Frills crew/movement, Bags. His letters are large, clean and bold. You can see how he has used the brick-line to fade between the two shades of filling, a great technique for getting straight lines. Looking forward to seeing more from Bags and maybe if I get lucky coming across this lot when they are out painting.

2283.Dean Lane skate park (223)

It can be a little tiresome for people like me when artists change their ‘street’ names, because it mucks up how I catalogue them and how I write about them. A case in point is Biers (old name) who now goes by the moniker Kool Aid, and instead of writing Biers like he used to, writes Oh Yeah instead. I am a creature of habit so will continue to call him Biers, so there! In this piece he has teamed up with No Frills stablemate Bags about whom I know zilch, so some work for me to do there.

The standard approach from Biers is to accompany his uniquely stylish writing with a little character, usually associated with a TV cartoon character. I rather enjoy trying to find out who his little characters are, but in this piece my Google research has failed me. Nice tidy collaboration.

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	Sheree on 7352. Cumberland Basin
	paulh121 on 7350. Hillgrove Street (9…

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