7219. Brunel Way (337)

Umbrelle, Emchoux, Kid Crayon, Tera and El Ruby Tattoo, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Umbrelle, Emchoux, Kid Crayon, Tera and El Ruby Tattoo, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025

The DoorDie club have painted a few collaborative walls this year of which, this might be the best. We are familiar with Kid Crayon and Tera’s work but perhaps less so with the remaining collaborating artists, Umbrelle, Emchoux and El Ruby Tatoo.

Umbrelle and Emchoux, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Umbrelle and Emchoux, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025

We start with an eye-catching black and white vampire portrait from Umbrelle, which includes a fine pair of bat wings. Alongside this character piece is a smaller vampire by Emchoux. Both artists are tattoo artists, which explains their work as resembling tattoo flash sheets.

Kid Crayon, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Kid Crayon, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Kid Crayon, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Kid Crayon, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025

Next up are two pieces of writing from Kid Crayon in a Gothic style, resonating with the vampire theme, which spell out ‘do’ and ‘die’, he didn’t have room to paint the ‘or’. It is unusual for Kid Crayon to write letters like this, but he has done a great job.

Tera, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
Tera, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025

Taking up centre stage is a satanic piece by Tera. It is worth noting that Tera has only been spray painting for a few months, and is already turning out epic pieces like this one. There is a bit of glare in the photograph which is a little unfortunate.

El Ruby Tattoo, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025
El Ruby Tattoo, Brunel Way, Bristol, September 2025

The final piece in this collaboration is by El Ruby Tattoo, featuring a character who looks like a female fawn, complete with horns and pointy elf-like ears. A perfect end piece to this impressive collaboration.

7147. Stapleton Road

Tera and Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025
Tera and Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025

I am going to break with tradition in this post and contravene my primary rule, that all photographs are taken by me. This is a rare occurrence and it has been necessitated by the fact that I visited this collaboration from Kid Crayon and Tera less than 24 hours after it had been painted, but I was met by a rather disappointing and talentless tag stating that Jesus loves me. While that may or may not be true, it rather scuppered my photo opportunity. Fortunately, Kid Crayon took some of his own pictures, and I have used them for this post. Exceptional circumstances.

Tera and Kid Crayon, Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025
Tera and Kid Crayon, Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025

This pair have been smashing it all summer long, but I think somebody has it in for them, because few of their collaborations have lasted more than a few days. The two outstanding portraits are painted in the dia de los Muertos tradition, although there are a couple of months before we get to that celebration.

Tera and Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025
Tera and Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025

On the left, Tera, who I might remind you only started painting walls this summer, has painted a face that reminds me of the band Kiss in it’s makeup styling. He has created some superb depth in the contours of the face with clever reflections of the candles in the lips and cheeks. Utterly brilliant work.

Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025
Kid Crayon (credit: Kid Crayon), Stapleton Road, Bristol, August 2025

Kid Crayon, who has been mentoring Tera (and let’s face it has done a great job of that), has gone for a more traditional styling in the facemask makeup, with some nice flowers (mirrored in the hair) and black patterning. Lots of wrinkles in the neck and black nails on the ends of the woman’s fingers poised while she takes a drag on ger cigarette. Kid Crayon offers a slightly different take on candles, but both are superb. One of my favourite collaborations of the year so far.

7104. M32 roundabout J3 (698)

Kid Crayon and Tera, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025
Kid Crayon and Tera, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025

This is a wonderful character collaboration from Kid Crayon and Tera, otherwise known as the Doordie crew (do or die). What is extra special about this is that it has lasted a couple of weeks, which is quite rare for a Kid Crayon piece these days, and should be celebrated.

Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025
Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025

The character on the left is by Kid Crayon and on the right by Tera, between the battling zombies we see a collection of bones spelling UZI (Undead Zombie Infection). The green zombie looks very much like the characters from Plants vs Zombies, a game that my kids very much enjoyed a few years ago. There is so much detail and expression in this zombie, brilliantly crafted by Kid Crayon.

Tera, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025
Tera, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2025

Tera, continues to amaze with his rapid progress this summer with this fantasy style zombie, a little more menacing and scary than his counterpart. There is, once again, plenty of detail in the piece, with the bony fingers taking a prominent role. Altogether a fine and fun collaboration. It is so good to see Kid Crayon out so often this summer, with a regular painting partner.

7060. St Werburghs tunnel (517)

Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, July 2025
Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, July 2025

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.

Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, July 2025
Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, July 2025

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.

7000. M32 roundabout J3 (692)

Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, May 2025
Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, May 2025

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.

Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, May 2025
Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, May 2025

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.

6961. M32 roundabout J3 (686)

Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, April 2025
Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, April 2025

Although this piece is a little bleached out by the strong sun, I am so pleased to have captured it at all. So many times when Kid Crayon has painted a new piece, I get down to photograph it, and it has gone. I don’t know if this is purely coincidental, or whether there is something more sinister going on. Suffice it to say that I have missed at least two pieces by him this year.

Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, April 2025
Kid Crayon, M32 roundabout, Bristol, April 2025

It is fantastic to see Kid Crayon getting out more often this year, after quite a long period of low productivity – due in part to his real work being very busy. In this piece, the letters CRAYON can be seen with a little reversed out KID at the start. Each letter has an individual paint treatment, with the base colours alternating through the word. The ‘O’ is represented by a character with a blue face, donning a rather fetching Eat crew baseball cap. A floating crayon in front of the character’s mouth rounds the piece off nicely. There are so many KC trademarks in this fun and uplifting piece.

6677. Dean Lane (799)

Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, January 2025
Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, January 2025

It brings me great joy when I come across new Kid Crayon pieces. He has been reasonably quiet over the last couple of years, which in a way is a good thing, because it signals that his work is going well, and being an artist/designer having plenty of work is always a positive.

Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, January 2025
Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, January 2025

This wall used to have three alcoves in it, and in fairness, was quite difficult to paint. For whatever reason, the council decided to fill the alcoves with breeze blocks, and I have to say that the unintended consequence was this new long wall, which artists have been enjoying ever since. Kid Crayon has used the full length of the wall to paint his letters in hi favoured pink. Each letter is in a distinct style, where the ‘O’ is a masked character incorporating a floating crayon. A nice tidy piece and great way to start the year.

6476. Cumberland Basin

Kid Crayon, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, October 2024
Kid Crayon, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, October 2024

Kid Crayon has launched himself headlong into the Halloween season with this mildly creepy scene, underpinned with his CRAYON letters, that perhaps resemble stone carvings. I can’t really explain what the ladder and chair are doing, but they act as good bookends to the piece.

Kid Crayon, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, October 2024
Kid Crayon, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, October 2024

The spooky atmosphere is provided by the leafless dead trees in the background, and the long-haired character emerging from a well… what is happening here? The same character (?) is seen reflected in a mirror. There is a story, and a creepy one at that, without even a whiff of a pumpkin in sight. Well done KC.

6391. Dean Lane skate park (755)

Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2024
Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2024

Regular readers may recall that I am not a fan of posting work that is in effect advertising, but it seems that it is becoming all too common, whether promoting music or art. I guess I am more forgiving if an artist is promoting their own work, or helping out with mates, but it it still doesn’t sit very comfortably with me. It is a fine line between advertising for mates and corporate advertising. I suppose if money doesn’t change hands then it is ok. Somehow, though, the promotional aspect seems to disrupt the freedom of the artist, because there is a different driver or purpose, and this is reflected in their style and content.

Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2024
Kid Crayon, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2024

Kid Crayon manages to gain leniency from me because I love his work, and in this piece he promotes n exhibition ‘Art on wax’ that happened way back in July. I expect the delay in posting the piece was down to my prevarication. It is well painted but in my view insincere. There you have it.

6347. St Werburghs tunnel (441)

Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, August 2024
Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, August 2024

Following on from the last post, a wheatpaste by Abbie Laura Smith, it perhaps ought to be remembered that Kid Crayon began his foray into street art with magnificent wheatpastes dotted around central Bristol, before moving on to spray-painting, a transition he managed almost seamlessly.

Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, August 2024
Kid Crayon, St Werburghs, Bristol, August 2024

This is a magnificent piece of composition writing from Kid Crayon, where each letter is telling its own story, with the ‘Y’ shaped like a catapult and the ‘N’ is a burning candle. Magnificent and creative stuff from Kid Crayon, nicely executed. It is so good to see the artist out there painting more this summer, as he has been a little quiet on the streets since Covid, being busy with his work.