This is something a little different and unexpected from Subtle in Dean Lane. I have noticed that he has become more active lately in the common spots of Bristol, and wonder if he has moved more centrally, or perhaps he has found himself with a little more time on his hands.
Subtle, Dean Lane, Bristol, August 2026
Subtle’s usual letter style has been jettisoned in favour of this rather more conventional letter design, and unusually he hasn’t buffed the wall either, pointing towards a bit of a quick throw up. The red fill is decorated with some white spots and a bit of white dusting, and the depth is provided by a tidy black drop shadow and fine white border. Welcome back to Dean Lane.
Roma has settled into a rather nice rhythm of painting and is also settling into a fairly consistent letter style. Her distinctive overlapping letters are quite pointy, although she has painted smoother letters in the past, and her ‘O’ and ‘A’ have an additional embellishment at the top.
Roma, M32 roundabout, Bristol, August 2026
In this piece she has chosen to paint over a particularly busy piece – by Biers – which does distract a little from her own work. Perhaps a bit more background would help to delineate her work from the existing work of others. I know that this is a stylistic approach used by many writers, but my view would be to consider the wall, not only the letters. The blended fill and horizontal stripe of stars is fabulous and well executed. Upwards and onwards.
No fuss, no bother. What you see is what you get from this throw up piece by Butch. There is no pretension from this graffiti writing, simply his skeleton format, without frills. Often a piece like this would struggle to make the cut for Natural Adventures, but I like his work and include it when I can.
Butch, Purdown, Bristol, August 2026
I’ll be popping up to Purdown this morning for a dog walk, it is one of the few graffiti spots where both the dog and I get what we each need from a walk. The yellow and black letters overlapping from the left reflect the parcherd grass and contrast with the wide dramatic sky. A nice straightforward piece.
Over the last year or so, Cheo seems to have upped his game (if that is at all possible), certainly in the frequency of his wall decorations. Cheo is a very talented artist who has been part of the ‘establishment’ in Bristol, but never lost his contemporary edge, and appears to be equally happy with his commercial work and his ‘graffiti’ art.
Cheo, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2026
This piece in Dean Lane is in a narrow section and quite difficult to photograph – where would I be without a wide angle facility on my phone? The character in the piece, wearing a LIDL T-shirt has been spraying (one assumes) a CHEO throw up in green and blue. He is holding a spray can out of which a rather surreal scene unfolds… a pink blob character, complete with a plunger stuck to his head and smoking a cigar. What!? Great work from a master craftsman.
It is funny how once you register a new artist, you start to see their work about the place, when before you might have missed their pieces altogether. This throw up by Endz is a great example of this phenomenon.
Endz, River Avon, Bristol, December 2024
I happened to glance up at this piece alongside the River Avon, and did a double-take having realised that I hadn’t long since met the artist. The style is quite different to the first piece which I posted a little while ago, but nonetheless the work of a talented artist. Looking forward to finding more Endz work in 2025.
A rather nice bit of bubble writing, but what’s so special about that you might ask. The first thing that you might notice is that it is beautifully finished and much less crude than most throw ups painted in this kind of style. In short the piece has class.
SkyHigh, M32 roundabout, Bristol, July 2023
Perhaps the reason it stands out is that it is by the superb SkyHigh, and if you look carefully the letters, with the tiger print pattern, read SKY! with the word ‘high’ written in black script in the middle. I guess that the artist was passing through, as he often visits Bristol with Roo to visit friends/relatives. Often we are treated to a large SkyHigh wall with his unique style of high-end block lettering, but not this time. Great to see all the same.
I don’t know where Wispa (@willow_the_wispa) lives, but she seems to pop up all over the country and indeed in other countries, which gives me the impression that she is constantly on the move. On the upside, it means that she comes to visit her Bristol RBF friends reasonably regularly and leaves something for us all to enjoy.
Wispa, Elton Street, Bristol, April 2023
This is a wonderful mash-up of stylised throw-ups and tagging finished in a neat, tidy and deliberate way. Sanitising this kind of artwork isn’t easy, and Wispa has done it brilliantly. At first glance it might look like a mess, but it is in fact a really classy piece from a great writer. I already look forward to her next visit.
It is always a pleasure to come across a Pl8o piece, even more so since I met him. There is something about his letter choice that really appeals to me, so not only is it a nice bit of word play, the shapes of the letters work really nicely together.
Pl8o, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, September 2021
In this piece, Pl8o has reverted to his big block letters after a brief flirtation with script, although the dep 3D shadings he favours are not present in this one. A decent enough throwie (throw up) and another to add to his repertoire.
I don’t visit this area nearly as often as I used to. In the olden days when I walked to the office (a dim and distant memory) I would often take a little detour up Nine Tree Hill and along Armada Place. My reduction in walking this way has coincided with a significant downward shift in turnover of pieces in the locality, indeed across much of the Stokes Croft area. It was rather a nice surprise therefore to come across these three little tag-pieces from PWA crew’s Face 1st, Soap and Nightwayss.
Nightwayss and Face 1st, Nine Trees Hill, Bristol, May 2021
I am a bit of a fan of decorating utility boxes, which in their regimented green or black monochrome colours are eyesores that pollute every street in every village, town and city in the UK. Decorating these boxes is not legal, but in my view most welcome, and in some cities around the world is actively welcomed or even commissioned… imaging that. The three pieces here are quick throw ups, probably painted in haste. The monkey is by Nightwayss, the face by Face 1st and the mouth/skull by Soap. These are the key signature elements of each of the three artists.
Soap, Nine Trees Hill, Bristol, May 2021
The three artists have decorated one box each and brightened up this little corner immeasurably. I am sure that some people will see this as thoughtless vandalism and be quite angry about it. This is the spice of life.
Over the last three or four months, Slakarts has been rather busy with his three-quarter profile throw-up character, and probably produced more of these than his regular and rather more complex faces. This one is on one of the tunnel entrances of the M32 roundabout. There is an interesting artefact of photography, light and paint in this piece… in the feature photograph you can see the ghosts of old graffiti underneath the white parts, but in the content photograph below, the white fill is simply white. Curious.
Slakarts, M32 roundabout, Bristol, December 2020
I rather like this one from Slakarts because it is a little bit more finessed than some of the others in this series. The black lines are clean and the blue outlines work very well indeed. More of these in the archive!
