Art and Design

Buy a "Tossing Heads" iPhone Skin

2011-05-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

This little carnival freak likes to toss some skulls around when he's trying to work out a problem in his own head.

Original Painting for Sale

2011-04-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have this painting for sale on eBay. It's an original, oil on wood and ready to hang.

The iCade for Your iPad

2011-04-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

For $99.99 you can put your iPad in this case for a little of that old time arcade feel when playing Asteroids or Space Invaders on your iPad. Apparently, this idea started out as an April Fool's Joke last year, but now ThinkGeek has really built it. Purchase are on back order...so you may have to wait a bit before getting one.

Now That's an iPhone Case!

2011-04-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

I know you can skin your iPhone...put them in a case, even bedazzle them...but check this out; the Cadillac of iPhone accessorizing at luxaddiction.com.

Artist: Mark Ryden

2011-04-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

Mark Ryden is definitely one of my favorites, not only for his fabulous paintings, but also for those frames! Most of these frames are custom made in Thailand (youTube), like the one he had made for the above painting "Incarnation", based off of sketches by Mark (check out the youTube video to see frame). Just amazing!

Artist: Joshua Davis

2011-04-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

I met Joshua back in the Summer of 2000 when Ezra (from Lucid Circus) and I went up to NYC for a Three.oh party. Joshua had gotten pretty big with his incredible Flash work and was even starting to give related lectures around the country, so when I met him, I didn't expect the shaved head, t-shirt and full sleeves of ink on both arms. He was very personable and genuine. Over the years I've followed his work, which has evolved from being Flash interactive work to digital art that he prints out on huge sheets of high quality paper and shows in galleries. Now, I see he has printed one of his latest designs onto a limited edition cup. I love it!

How to Make a Repeating Pattern

2011-04-17T03:56:00.000-07:00

Whether it's for a website background or yards of fabric, here's how you can make your design repeat.

1. Create a design in a square shape so it doesn't touch any of the edges.

2. Find the horizontal half-way point and cut the design in half. Then flip the top and bottom pieces.

3. Then find the vertical half-way point and cut the design in half again. This time flipping the left and right pieces.

There you have it...a repeating pattern.

Fabric Printing at Spoonflower

2011-04-16T05:16:00.001-07:00

My very first fabric pattern, Blue Elephant! Spoonflower is where you go if you want to try your hand at fabric design. To get a fabric just right for a repeating pattern, you need to create the design into the center of a square -- I worked with a square foot (12"x12") for mine -- make sure none of the design is touching the edges. Then cut it in half horizontally and, if you using Photoshop, go to Edit, Transform and flip the upper and lower halves vertically. Now cut it in half vertically and flip horizontally. If your design was, say a circle, in the middle, now you would have a 1/4 of a circle curving outward from the center at each corner.

After I created my designs and uploaded them, they were held in my private gallery. To make them public, I had to order fabric samples for a small fee. They arrived a week or two later, then I was able to make my design public.

Book of the Week: Graffiti World

2011-04-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

If you are into that whole street art, lowbrow, graffiti scene -- like I am -- then I can't say enough about this book. I've dog-eared it to death (actually I've stuck tons of little pieces of paper in as bookmarks because you really don't want to damage any of this book's pages). It is so chuck full, 376 pages, of great imagery from all around the world of some really great graffiti, including Os Gemeos. I use it all the time for inspiration when I'm not sure of what to paint next. I'm planning to pick up Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continentsin the very near future...just love Miss Van!

Printing Pillows with Envelop.eu

2011-04-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a pillow I put together for Envelop.eu...I'm a big fan of frogs. They have a pretty nice set-up. You just sign up for an account, download the templates (be sure to read the instructions in the accompanying PDF), paste your art in and make the print file, plus thumbnail images for the site, then just upload. Again, with any of these sites, while they do get some of their own traffic. It is best to share your items link on your own site, facebook, etc.

Artist: Jorge Tellaeche

2011-04-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

I love this guy. He hails from Mexico City and paints on everything from outdoor walls to chairs. Jorge Tellaeche's work is very organic and colorful. You can check out his site at www.tellaeche.com.

Artist: Michael Shapcott

2011-04-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

I love the way Michael Shapcott builds up his colors. He hales for Hartford, Connecticut...hmmm, I wonder if he knows Salvatore C., an old school pal of mine from my Art Institute days in Philly. Anyway Michael has a nice time-lapse video on his site where you can see the color build up for yer self. I like how he starts with a pencil sketch.

Designer Art Shoes

2011-03-30T04:34:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist...I can get my art printed onto shoes, or Ked sneakers to be precise. They also have hi-tops, slip-on sneakers, men, women, and kids -- they being Zazzle.com . What is nice is that you can take the items, like shoes, and list them on your own website under a shop section and when someone click on the thumbnail on your site, it will just link them back to the Zazzle store.

ClickforArt.com

2011-03-29T04:21:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this site, ClickforArt.com, about a week ago and just love it! They have a great collection of these new contemporary lowbrow/pop surrealist artist showing off their creations on pillows, tea cups, eye masks...soon even chairs. A lot of items are offered as limited editions. There's Camilla D'Errico, Erik Natzke, Gary Baseman, Jon Burgerman, Joshua Davis, and Julie West to name a few.

Enjoy!
Lawn Walker
Designer and Artist

Print My Art!

2011-03-25T03:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve been exploring on-line printing, where I can place my art onto pillows, iPhone skins, laptops, bags, etc., as well as just have prints made. I provide the art; they print and ship the product. Café Press was my first go at this, but after seeing a few of the t-shirts come back with fairly botched print jobs on them (they did send new ones, buy those were botched too), I decided to try out Zazzle and managed to get into the ArtProjekt’s section. They offer a great selection of products, including shoes! And the prints I've had them make have been great. I’m going to keep my Zazzle store, but since they are so big and more product oriented. I wanted to see if I could find something a little more boutique-like and more focused on the art. Society 6 seemed to fit the bill and I have enjoyed using them to sell my prints through, even art printed onto laptops and iPhone skins. I like the way that, first and foremost, things are listed by the art work where you can promote other artist’s work. I love to browser art and there’s just something about this site’s user interface that works great, for me, to do so. Then, if you want a print or laptop skin, you can just click on the art thumbnail and see if the artist listed any of those products for sale. Sometimes there’s nothing available for sell. They’re just presenting their art. And I have a few pieces in there like that too. It’s nice to see how people respond to what I’ve been creating; which has been a hodge-podge of stuff lately, but that’s another story. Anyway, it's really a great virtual place to hang-out. For my obsession with needing to design pillows (and this is what drove me to create a new digital illustration line that is a bit different from my paintings), I went to Envelop. They have pillows, aprons, tote bags, which are next on my list to get down and wacky with, just to name a few. Eventually, I would love to be on ClickforArt, but I’m still developing and want to see what comes out of me after some more experimentation.

Most of these sites will put you through some kind of review before letting you on board, but once on board don’t expect things to just magically start selling. This is where the dredge work comes in of self-promoting. I recommend setting up a personal website with your name in the URL, for search engine purposes, and put a gallery of work on it; you’ll need this anyway to get onto some of these sites. Wordpress is offers a fairly user-friendly solution for setting up sites and applying already designed templates that you can edit if you like for a reasonable price, if you host with them, otherwise the Wordpress engine if free to download. Then add a mailing list sign-up form on the homepage or in a sidebar that shows up on a lot of the pages. MailChimp worked out great for me and they even provide you with a widget to put on your Facebook page, which you should set-up on of those too. Facebook, has a pretty good click-ad program too that can get you started with building a fan base. These tips will get you start, but you’ll just have to stay at it, picking away. If you live in NYC or LA (or any major city), and aren’t too concern with the possibility of getting arrested, you could go for the graffiti route. Once you’ve established a name in that world, folks will start searching for it in Google. Hope these tips help, and good luck with the print-my-art journey.

Lawn Walker
Designer and Artist

2011-03-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

Head Banger iPhone Skin
Yes, it's finally here...the Head Banger iPhone skin via Society 6...enjoy!

Best to Let the Professionals Handle This One

2011-03-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

“If you were an art director, you would have been one by now.”

Those words have bounced around in my head for over 10 years, spoken by Nat Hunter with whom I had the pleasure of working with on an interactive game-like training CD for PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, England back in the late 90’s. I have to give a quick shout out to the company she and some mates (as she would put it) started soon after the PWC experience, called Airside, an endeavor that impresses and inspires me to this day. But back to the comment. It was made to one of the PWC managers over seeing the project. It’s the same old story us creative types have to endure over and over again. This manager, a non-creative, tried to push her creative input onto the team. These evolving ideas kept changing, sending the whole project down an endless rabbit hole of tangents; some changes that even contradicted the current designs in place. The project was doomed to never reach completion, and in the end the million dollar budget that was allotted to the production of four CDs was blown on just the first one.

This is what happens when non-creative people think they can design. They lack the raw skills and training to handle keeping a project on time, budget and produced with consistency. I don’t mean to sound, well mean, about this to any non-creative reading this article, but would you try and tell your accountant how to crunch your numbers, or your doctor what your symptoms diagnose you with, well some of you might, but common sense should dictate that you’ve hired one of these professionals to do what their background and schooling has qualified them to do.

Ah, but there’s something about the creative fields, everyone wants to be an artist, but see the things is, if you were, you would have been one by now. So it’s really best to leave the creative work to the creatives.

That’s just my two cents.

Lawn Walker
Designer and Artist

Guardian Of Bravery: Lawn Walker

2011-02-16T04:08:00.000-08:00

Guardian Of Bravery: Lawn Walker: "You have traveled a lot and worked in many awesome places, do you currently freelance? Yep, anything to put meat and biscuits on the table ..."

The Head Banger Mug

2010-11-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

Head Banger Mug by lawnwalker
Browse other Artsprojekt Mugs

It's 4:05 a.m. and I can't sleep. I slowly slide my tentacles out of the bed in hopes not to wake the others. There is a little man in the hallway banging away at a giant skull. He stares at me with his yellow eyes. I slide on past him and think nothing of it.

Dear Francis

2010-10-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Francis,
It’s been an interesting summer/fall to say the least. Back in June, I discovered I have an orange tree growing in my head. I thought about having it removed right away, but the fruit wasn’t ripe yet, so removal is scheduled for November 17^th. It’s an unusual type of orange tree, not like your Florida sunshine one, that goes by the nickname of a “Flying Dragon” and produces very sour oranges that have a late harvest. Shortly after that discovery I found my husband to be addicted to swallowing flowers; all sorts of varieties, though mostly roses. He had been hiding it from me for some time. It was only when the neighbors came to me with revealing photos of flowerless rose bushes and that I couldn’t find the dried flowers I had been using as markers in my cook books, did I begin to put one and one together. I did the only thing one could do when reveal with such an alarming thing. I grabbed my grandfather’s rifle off the wall and pulled my husband’s most beloved possession from his clutched fingers, took it out to the woods, and shot it! It was this God forsaken bunny that had driven him to flower swallowing in the first place. I thought, maybe at last, things might settle down for a while. They settled for about a week or two, until I came home one day to find my husband with his head in his hands on our front step. His Coin Giver had found out about the flower swallowing and dismissed him from The Garden. All is not lost though; I have buyers lined up for these oranges growing in my head. Apparently, they make tasty candies for German children. Hope your summer and fall weren't too unusual. Yours Always, Cassandra

Prints Now Available

Please be sure to check out the store for prints of Dear Francis. Keep up on the latest this-n-that at www.lawnwalker.com

Cups-n-Saucers

2010-09-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Sydney: Weeee....weeee....wee...ug....ooooh.
Tom: What's wrong?
Sydney: I gotta puke. Ooooh...shit.
Tom: Don't you dare puke on me!
Sydney: Oh, please...a little puke wouldn't hurt you. Beside I got hit upside my face by one of your boogers.
Tom: It wasn't my booger! It was the chick in the green sweater's.
Sydney: What? I got hit by some chick-I-don't-even-know's snot. Oooh...I knew I shouldn't have eaten the anchovies.
Tom: Fish belong in the sea, not on the side of my face. Why's that girl all by herself?
Sydney: Which girl?
Tom: The one in the green?
Sydney: Snot issues?
Tom: No, I think she's hitching a ride to Canada.
Sydney: What?
Tom: Hitting the side with a banana.
Sydney: What?
Tom: Stop kicking my leg.
Sydney: Is this over yet?

The Golden Flower

2010-02-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

Just finished this one. I've been reading The Tree of Life. More of my art can be found at www.lawnwalker.com

My Sweet Dear

2010-01-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

Finally finished my latest painting. Been reading about Sir Isaac Newton. While well known for being a scientist and mathematician, I just found out about his exploits into occult studies. I was googling alchemy when I came across it. He apparently suffered a nervous breakdown while studying it, which some believe is more about the transformation of the individual's mind and body to an enlightened state, then making gold.