Awkward and Benjimagnetic have been having a bit of fun in Dean Lane recently, producing a couple of collaborations which are always worth photographing and reporting on.
Benjimagnetic’s GRO letters in the middle of this combination collaboration are book ended by two slightly creepy characters by Awkward. The ensemble works well as always with this pair. It is the eyes in Awkward’s characters that draw me to them, clever and impactful design.
This is another fabulous collaboration from Hypo and Minto, who seem to team up reasonably regularly and clearly enjoy painting together. The little tag – ‘Hypo Minto combo’ captures the friendship really well.
Hypo has smashed it with his writing. The colours are magnificent and transition through the piece with grace and style. The shading, and in particular the white highlights, help the piece to pop and create a superb 3D effect. Truly outstanding. Alongside the letters, Minto has painted a contrasting greyscale character portrait, and a tribute to Dave I guess. The combination piece just works – a classy collaboration.
Although this superb piece of graffiti writing from Dirtygypo isn’t really a collaboration, it does have a cheeky collaborative element from the inclusion of one of Posh’s distinctive characters, of which there appears to have been an outbreak of across Bristol in the last couple of months.
As with many of Dirtygypo’s pieces, each of the letters are assigned a different colour and the word it interspersed with bolts of lightening. I won’t drift into trying to interpret the word this time, I’ll simply have to wait until I meet him to find an answer. All good stuff, and another fine piece from Dirtygypo.
Wow! This colourful piece by Dirtygypo is difficult not to notice. The letters are splashed with so many colours and great shapes, accompanied by lightening bolts and crowns. The piece is a single-handed festival. I would describe it as a combination piece, as the character at the start is rather well-developed, and adds fun and mischief to the whole piece.
I have pretty much given up trying to work out what the letters spell, despite many attempts. I can see so many letters and words, but would need to confirm with the artist, who I haven’t yet met. Today I am going for the obvious and guess that it says DIRTY.
It really isn’t that long ago that Bloem was painting rather basic fingers, cellphones and devilled cherries in some of the less popular spots all around Bristol, but her accelerated progress means that her work is more than comfortable alongside some of the best writers in the city.
This is a wonderful and complex combination piece, with some amazing writing and a cartoon-style hand (long nails of course). The weave pattern used to fill her letters is beautifully worked, and very neat and tidy. Every element of the piece has been nicely thought out and has come together really well. This is one of those pieces that actually looks better in a photograph, than it does in situ, perhaps because of its complexity. What a talent.
In my mind, some collaborations were just meant to be, and this magnificent joint venture from Werm and Scrapyardspec is simply awesome. Two utterly different styles, a writer and a character artist, have combined with skilful design and colour sharing to create a piece that just works brilliantly.
There is nothing pretentious about this combination piece, just two artists comfortable with what they do where the resulting whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The letters by Werm are nicely executed with straightforward fills and a bold white border. Scrapyardspec’s goofy character replaces the ‘E’ of ‘WERM’ and is integrated into the word with the clever use of an orange border bringing everything into the single piece. Excellent work, full of the joy of street art friendship.
Sub had a busy month in July and appears to be pushing the boundaries with his work. This piece tucked away on the M32 roundabout seems to be a practice for a combination piece he followed up with in Peel Street Green (to follow soon).
Sub’s chunky letters and deep drop shadows in icy blues, together with a couple of decorative cracks, are accompanied by a Mario character which I would describe, perhaps a little harshly, as a good first effort. It doesn’t help that the eyes are a bit untidy. What you might notice, when I post the next version of the character in a few days the vast improvement. The learning journey with Sub continues.
There seems to be a direct correlation between the days and locations that Kid Crayon paints, and the longevity of his pieces. More than any other artist I can think of, his work gets painted over really quickly, and I have missed several of his pieces this year, arriving a day late.
Most recently, a piece in Cumberland Basin lasted a day maybe, and worse still it was only half painted over, which is rude, and not in the spirit of the unwritten graffiti code of etiquette. I rushed to photograph this one, and of course, it has bucked the trend and lasted a while, and was still intact yesterday.
This is a superb example of Kid Crayon’s playful style, with a great combination of letters and characters throughout the piece. The piece formed a part of a Frazzled Magazine paint jam, which included the artists Mind 49, Ejits, and Smak amongst others. There is so much to enjoy in this piece with so many little details to admire, for example, the munching maggot carving pieces out of the letter ‘C’at the start of the piece. Fabulous work.
This piece from Hire had me raising my eyebrows, in a good way, because it is quite unlike anything I have seen from him before. I would normally associate his work with quite intricate, spiky, angular letters, but here he has gone for something altogether softer and more fluid – to be honest I hind it a little disorientating. (Update – I am being particularly dense, the writing is, of course, by Sait Bare, which is why it is so different in style. I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
The combination of letters and two characters works well, with a face on the left and one of his trademark rabbits (see, it is spiky) to the right. The letters have a traditional 3D drop shadow with black and red stripes. This whole thing looks like Hire is experimenting a bit, departing from his customary style, and that has to be applauded.
I was rather lucky to be in the right place at the right time as Two Face was drafting up this piece on the wall. I haven’t come across the artist before, and he tells me that he has only recently moved to Bristol, so I will be on the lookout for his work, for sure.
The combination piece is really rather good, incorporating a hand and fired gun on the left and some rather nicely presented writing on the right, with very fine fill work indeed. Lots of textures, techniques and perspectives in this debut (to Natural Adventures) piece. Bravo!
Natural adventures 