Reasons to Smile (14 Photos)

September 26, 2026

By Vidar

A café for one

David Zinn’s furry chalk creature sits inside a tree stump with a cup of coffee and a small pastry, perfectly at home. Small, cheerful scenes like this turn up all through the collection, on walls, steps, park paths and even a beach.

🌳 Beautiful Love — By Alter OS in Mexico City, Mexico 🇲🇽

The painted children crouch at the base of a real tree that grows in front of the wall. The girl works the soil with her fingers while the boy holds the trunk, as if they had just planted it together. White flower outlines fill the gray wall behind them.

💡 Nerd Fact: Alter OS is Omar Arias, a self-taught artist from Iztapalapa who moved from graffiti to realistic murals, as he told the Morelia International Film Festival in an interview.

More: 2 Photos of “Beautiful Love” by Alter OS in Mexico City

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🦝 Hubert — By The Half Decent in Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦

Hubert has put on a top hat and a bow tie, but his wide eyes suggest he isn’t sure about the outfit. The pink outline lifts him off the dark block wall, and the artist’s name runs across the top in the same pink.

💡 Artist Fact: The Half Decent was born in Switzerland and raised in Toronto. After three years in Europe, mostly in Barcelona’s graffiti scene, he worked as a tattoo artist for more than a decade, Wynwood Miami writes.

More: “Hubert” by The Half Decent in Toronto, Canada

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🐭 Cute Mouse Love — By David Zinn

One mouse lowers a pink heart on a long string toward another mouse farther down the wall. The two gaps in the brickwork become little windows, and the heart has almost reached the mouse below.

More: David Zinn Made Us Smile Again (12 Photos)

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🐱 A Helping Paw — By David Zinn

A pale cat leans over the edge of a concrete step and stretches one paw toward a much smaller mouse on the step below. A few crumbs lie beside the mouse.

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☕ Coffee in a Tree Stump — By David Zinn

A round, furry creature has made room for a cup and saucer inside a tree stump. Chalk shading makes the cut surface look hollow. Around it: red wood chips, fallen leaves and one very relaxed coffee break.

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🐻 Bear Family at the Waterfall — By Nikolaj Arndt

Bears gather around a waterfall that appears to break through a paved path. Two cubs stand in the water while larger bears watch from the edges. Real park trees grow all around it.

💡 Artist Fact: Arndt was born in 1975 in Gavrilov Posad, Russia, and moved to Germany in 2006. He has taken part in street art festivals since 2009, his website notes.

More: This Feels Too Real (22 Illusions by Nikolaj Arndt)

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Quick question: guess the city

A red-haired woman in a yellow top lies with her head on painted green grass, filling a low rectangular opening in a weathered wall.

She rests her head in an old garage opening. Which city is this wall in?

Show answer

Palermo, Italy 🇮🇹

🎨 Caterina Letizia — By Mirko LOSTE Cavallotto in Palermo, Italy 🇮🇹

A red-haired woman rests her head inside a low opening in the wall. Her calm face and yellow top stand out against the rough wall around her.

💡 Palermo Fact: Cavallotto comes from Caltanissetta. In 2017 he and Giulio “Rosk” Gebbia painted a portrait of the anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino on the Istituto Nautico at Palermo’s La Cala harbor, unveiled on the 25th anniversary of Borsellino’s murder.

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🌍 Play our Guess the City quiz: 10 more cities →

❤️ Girl with Red Heart — By Alessio B in Montagnana, Italy 🇮🇹

A seated girl faces a red heart larger than her whole body, her hair blowing to one side. Small butterflies lift off its upper edge, and the whole stencil fits inside a pale niche framed by white pilasters.

💡 Artist Fact: Alessio B, from Padua, started out with graffiti before moving to stencils, inspired by Blek le Rat and Banksy. His work was included in the 2018 exhibition “UN-DERSTAND The Power of Art as a Social Architect” at URBAN NATION in Berlin.

More: Street Art by Alessio B in Montagnana, Italy (3 Photos)

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🌈 Love and Peace — By Alessio B in Padua, Italy 🇮🇹

A smiling girl reaches up toward a rainbow breaking through a torn hole in the wall. Above it, a white dove carries a red rose in its beak. The rest of the stencil is black and white, so almost all the color sits between her hands.

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🏮 The Lantern World — By Majestic WKA

A long-legged blue bird and a smiling, crouching girl gather around an old lantern topped with a heart, while a small pink bird perches at its base. Look inside the glowing glass: a tiny figure is curled up in there.

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🏖️ Beach Break — By Slinkachu

Two tiny sunbathers lie back in blue deckchairs under a green bottle cap propped up on a wire. With the real sea and hills behind them, a discarded cap becomes the best shade on the beach.

More: 7 Tiny Street Dramas by Slinkachu

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🍄 The Kinglet’s Journey — By Mantra in Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸

A kinglet taller than the windows around it perches on a branch above purple and pink mushrooms. The mural covers the side of a corner building at 90 South 4th Street in Williamsburg, and the people on the sidewalk below show the scale.

💡 Nerd Fact: Mantra painted the wall in 2022 for the Audubon Mural Project, working with the Fungi Foundation to show fauna, flora and fungi together. The mural pairs ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets with common bonnet and amethyst deceiver mushrooms.

More: 15 Buildings Full of Butterflies (Street Art by Mantra)

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🐘 Baby Elephant — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner

Pebbles, pale stones, twigs and blue petals form a baby elephant with its trunk raised. Thin twigs and curved pale pieces trace its outline, and the bare, cracked ground shows through between them. Nothing here is painted.

💡 Nerd Fact: Bullen-Ryner works with foraged twigs, leaves, petals and stones, and no glue, in fields and woodland near her home in Hertfordshire, England, Upworthy reported. Wind and rain eventually scatter the pieces.

More: Nature Is Everything! 18 Stunning Artworks by Hannah Bullen-Ryner

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🌹 Rose and Peony — By BUBLEGUM in Elk Grove, California, USA 🇺🇸

A pink rose and a pale peony bloom through sweeping gray scrollwork on a dark facade. The black shutters, the door and the pale pilasters stay in place, so the flowers spread across the building in separate panels.

💡 Nerd Fact: BUBLEGUM, the Vigo-based Galician artist Tirso Paz, is known for his ornamental style. He painted this wall at 9045 Elk Grove Blvd during the first Paint the Grove festival in June 2026, as listed on the city’s Paint the Grove page.

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