I was lucky enough to catch up with DJPerks when he was just finishing off this small piece. He really is quite modest, and doesn’t talk much about his own artwork, and still manages to drive around taking pictures of other people’s street art.
DJPerks, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
This is a nicely designed quick one with a vanishing point right in the centre of the piece. Although I haven’t seen much of his work, and have only posted one before this one, I do like the way he mixes it up each time, playing with the letters PERKS, each piece original. It’ll be interesting if he continues along this path or whether, like some artists he’ll sttick with one basic design.
Getting lucky is all part and parcel of photographing and recording street art. I remember when I first started out I never thought I’d actually meet an artist (I naively thought it was all done under cover of darkness) let alone watch them at work. Over the last five years I have met countless artists and would consider myself friends with several of them. One who I met for the first time a week or two back was Subtle, and what an astonishingly nice bloke he is.
Subtle, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
Subtle, whose work first entered my consciousness in about 2016, is an artist who has eluded me until now and whose work just seems to be getting better and better with each piece. While I watched him doing this piece (distract I ought to say) he let me into a whole load of tips on technique, the most memorable of which is that he uses a roller and emulsion for the bulk of his work (most of what you can see above) and saves the spray paint for the details. The reason for this approach is driven by cost – a wall as large as this one would cost quite a lot if it was all done with just spray paint.
Subtle, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
I really enjoyed my twenty minutes in the company of Subtle and am pleased that I managed to get a reasonably clean completed picture (in spite of Soak and Young’s intervention) a few days later. For sure, this is one artist I’d love to catch up with again, and now that he has moved more centrally in Bristol I think the chances of that happening are greater than before.
Rezwonk and Subtle, Dean Lane, Bristol, September 2018
Oainted directly over a Hire piece, Slim Pickings has produced another outstanding TES piece in Dean Lane. By now, everyone should be familiar with ‘stock’ shape of Slim Pickings’ work so it is the fills and detail that is of real interest.
Slim Pickings, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
His work is always sharp and clean and in this piece his colour contrasts work really well. I like also how the colours used are reversed out on the ‘S’, and by that I mean, reading left to right, he has sprayed orange letters with red spots which becomes a red letter with orange spots. Nice tidy work, from the master of TES.
I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and watch Casette (@ros-fables) as he finished off this rather beautiful whale piece in Dean Lane. I haven’t come across the artist before, so it was great to meet him, albeit briefly, on his visit to Bristol from (I think) the west country.
Casette, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
The sperm whale (blue whale?) is set on a fat striped background, a theme that is carried into the body of the whale. I was pleased to see Casette using a bit of cardboard to mask the spray over some of the details, something I have started doing quite a lot – obviously a legit technique. Pleased to have seen this lovely one-off, until he next returns.
It feels like a pretty long time since I last saw anything by Kool Hand in Bristol, and I figured he might have moved to London because he has posted a few pieces on Instagram from there. But here is a new piece in Dean Lane, and I hope this signals a return.
Kool Hand, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
In this piece we see a return of his monkey/orangutan character, but just the head (looking a bit fierce) this time. I love the use of bold, vivid colours, the simple single-colour fills and clean designs. I think that if I try to do characters I might try something a bit like this, but to be a fraction as good would be success.
This is the second post I have written about a piece by DFC1848. You may recall from the last one that the artist is better known to me as a street art hunter who takes great pictures of street art in Bristol, Cheltenham and further afield.
DFC1848, Dean Lane, Bristol, June 2019
DFC1848 has started doing a bit of spraying himself, and in my eyes it is pretty good. This little character contains the letters DFC, although what these stand for I have no idea… I’ll have to ask him next time I see him. I went to this wall yesterday, and sadly (but rather predictably) it has been sprayed over, but it is possible to see remnants of the piece. I am full of admiration for his work and inspired to carry on practising so that I can take the leap and do a piece on a wall somewhere, sometime.
It is the shape and style of the letters that give this artist away, it is of course Cort, but he has recently taken to writing PAD, although here it looks like PIADY. There are many things to admire in this piece, which was painted solo, rather than with his friend Laic217.
Cort, Dean Lane, Bristol, June 2019
The two contrasting backgrounds of pink and blue add interest to the piece and the little details such as the red dots and lines and the gold rings are typical motifs used by the artist and ones that make his work so distinctive. Unusual and full of interest.
It is impossible to tire of the beautiful and bold writing of Subtle. This magnificent recent piece in Dean Lane is a perfect example of his writing style that is always so instantly recognisable.
Subtle, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2019
I like the fact that he has taken time to prepare the wall properly and chosen such a magnificent pink/magentafor the letters which are so cleanly painted. As is often the case with his work he has included just a few little highlights on the letters that lift the whole thing up another level. Subtle consistently turns out these superb pieces, which in this case is anything but subtle.
Only a couple of weeks ago I posted a piece by this artist, Bandito, from Upfest 2018 and stated that I didn’t know anything about him, well the same applies today. In that post I referenced a recent piece by him, and this is it.
Bandito, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2019
I am a big fan of tidy, clean and well-executed writing, and this one ticks all my boxes. His three-colour layering works very nicely, and the accent touches such as the stars and the yellow dusting around the outside of the piece are nicely done. I think I’ll need to keep my eyes peeled to see if I can find more from Bandito.
I said in a post a few days ago that Hire had come out of hibernation, and this, as if to prove it, is the second piece from him in the space of a week or so. This is an incredible work, which I am guessing spells HIRE, although I don’t quite know how it can, bevause of its bilateral symmetry. If I look at it hard, I can convince myself I can read HIRE, but I can also read AVA, so it could probably be anything.
Hire, Dean Lane, Bristol, June 2019
I have always liked Hire’s work, but I can never really understand why it gets painted over so quickly most of the time. Maybe it is the walls he chooses to paint that limits the lifespan of his work, or maybe there is a respect thing going on. I don’t know, but he certainly gets my respect and lots of it.
Natural adventures 