Someone Had Ideas (14 Photos)

September 27, 2026

By Vidar

Let the street finish it

Sandrine Estrade Boulet saw an octopus in a French storm drain, and Oakoak saw a job for Homer Simpson in a wall-mounted electrical box. These 14 street artworks run on ideas like that, some borrowed from the street itself and some from a good pun.

🐕 Rebel Doberman — By Gnasher in Southend-on-Sea, UK 🇬🇧

The pointed ears and steady stare belong to a guard dog; the puffer jacket and gold chain with a bone pendant belong to a fashion shoot. Gnasher brings both together in this mural for Southend City Jam, and the words painted in the corner add the pun: “Rebel without a ‘paws.’”

💡 Artist Fact: Gnasher first painted graffiti in 1985 in his hometown of Harlow, Essex, then spent 16 years on DJing and graphic design before returning to spray paint in 2009.

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🐙 A Drain Becomes an Octopus — By Sandrine Estrade Boulet in Marles-les-Mines, France 🇫🇷

Two eyes above the curb and red tentacles below it turn a storm drain into a creature. The grate, painted red, becomes part of its body, and its wavy bars flow straight into the tentacles spreading across the road.

💡 Nerd Fact: Estrade Boulet has taken part in Festival Les Petits Bonheurs since its first edition. It is an inclusive street-art festival in the Béthune-Bruay area where artists work alongside people with disabilities.

More: Waterworld – Street Art by Sandrine Boulet

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⚡ Homer Meets the Wiring — By Oakoak in France 🇫🇷

Homer Simpson grabs a real electrical box high on a brick wall, screaming as blue shock lines crackle around him. The loose black cables hanging below it are real too, which makes the shock look almost believable. From the sidewalk he looks tiny.

💡 Artist Fact: Oakoak comes from Saint-Étienne, France. Huck describes him as an office worker by day and a street artist by night who declines to talk about himself: “The most important thing is my work, not me.”

More: Lovely by Oakoak (10 Photos)

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🕳️ Below the Manhole — By David Zinn

A manhole cover seems to rise out of the sidewalk on a chalk-drawn pipe. Below it, a big blue troll peers over the edge while Sluggo, Zinn’s green stalk-eyed monster, and Philomena, a flying pig on the phone, crowd around the opening.

💡 Artist Fact: Zinn can’t pin down when he started drawing outdoors, partly because the first few times he was playing hooky from his commercial art work. He places it in the early 2000s, on his own driveway, in an Ann Arbor Observer profile.

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

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☂️ Blue Kiss — By Slinkachu

A blue bottle cap becomes an umbrella for a miniature couple sharing a kiss. The ridged metal edge gives away the scale, and the blurred clock tower behind them makes a scrap of litter look like a date in the city.

💡 Nerd Fact: Slinkachu, born in Devon in 1979, has been leaving repainted model-train figures on city streets since 2006. His photographs of them fill three books that have together sold more than 300,000 copies.

More: 7 Tiny Street Dramas by Slinkachu

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🧘 Use the Force — By JPS in the UK 🇬🇧

A small Yoda stands at the foot of the wall while a British police officer sits cross-legged in midair above him. The empty space between the two stencils does the work, and the three words on the wall explain it.

💡 Nerd Fact: JPS is Jamie Paul Scanlon, born in Weston-super-Mare. He turned to stencils in 2009 after a friend took him to a stencil exhibition in Bristol, his biography explains.

More: 40 Stunning Street Art By Creative Genius JPS

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🕹️ Donkey Kong Jr. Takes the High Ground — By Pappas Pärlor in Sweden 🇸🇪

Donkey Kong Jr. stands on top of a plain metal utility box, fists raised, as if he had just reached the next platform. A few small black pixel figures hover on the wall around him.

💡 Nerd Fact: Pappas Pärlor is Johan Karlgren, who started making bead art with his daughter and went on to fill his hometown of Motala with it. Östergötlands museum gave the project its own exhibition in 2024–25.

More: 90 Pixel Art Masterpieces: Pappas Pärlor’s Perler Bead Street Takeover

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🔥 The Tiny Fire Level — By Pappas Pärlor in Sweden 🇸🇪

Mario jumps between a burning window and a character climbing a ladder, and the narrow gray cabinet works as a vertical game level. One more flame sits on the top edge. Around it, long grass, a bent gray vent pipe and a metal railing keep the scene in the real world.

💡 Nerd Fact: SVT was already reporting on the bead figures in 2015, describing Motala as full of Karlgren’s street art.

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🤖 Anime Girl and Robot — By Studio Moonchild in Singapore 🇸🇬

A purple-haired girl holds her orange-tinted glasses with one hand and gives a mischievous look, while a blue robot joins in on the right. Hair clips, pins and white sparkles add small details across the bright wall.

💡 Nerd Fact: Studio Moonchild is the Singaporean duo ANACATHIE and FREAKYFIR (Anastasia Catharina and Muhammad Firdaus). Their Meeting of Styles profile notes that both worked in toy and game production for years before focusing on graffiti and street art.

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🐉 The Fire-Breathing Dragon — By Oakoak in France 🇫🇷

The dragon stands on the sidewalk below a blackened window, a little orange flame still coming out of its mouth. The soot above the shutters makes the damage look like the work of one very small creature that lost control.

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🦏 I Am a Unicorn — By Pure Evil in London, UK 🇬🇧

A white rhino fills a pair of black doors and announces, in big turquoise letters, what it would rather be. The line reads from across the street; up close, the rhino is built from loose gray and white strokes.

💡 Nerd Fact: The rhino is a recurring Pure Evil motif, and his gallery also sells “I Am A Unicorn” as an inflatable sculpture.

More: I Am A Unicorn

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🦊 Rosie in a White Shirt — By David Zinn

Rosie the fox peeks out where broken sidewalk slabs leave a gap, her head drawn on a small stone. Her white chest looks like a shirt front, and a green sprout at her neck works as a bow tie. Zinn’s own caption explains the outfit: “Rosie always wears a white shirt regardless, so dressing up for the holidays just comes naturally.”

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🍷 Celle de trop (One Too Many) — By Levalet in Paris, France 🇫🇷

A drawn figure sits slumped on the sidewalk, one hand on his head, yet still lifts a bottle toward the long row lined up above him. Levalet uses the real ledge as a shelf, and the title says the rest. Street-Heart’s Levalet archive records Celle de trop in Paris’s 2nd arrondissement in 2015.

More: One too many – By Levalet in Paris, France

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🐭 Nadine and the Shared Log Cabin — By David Zinn

Nadine stands in a doorway at the base of a tree stump, cup in hand and dressed in blue, while a small brown neighbor looks out of a window higher up. Zinn fits both into openings in the stump, so a piece of cut wood in a bed of red wood chips becomes a shared home.

💡 Nerd Fact: Nadine is a recurring Zinn character, a “mouse of adventure,” as his website puts it. His own post introduced this drawing as the emergence of Nadine and her shared log cabin.

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