When you can pickup a one of a kind piece of art for a reasonable price thats a win/win in my book!

Check out her etsy shop at: www.etsy.com/shop/AshLethal

Magnarella explained the move as follows “I want to use my experience with guiding and nurturing the careers of musicians to create a similar platform for talented artists. And Charming’s talent is undeniable.”

The idea of putting a true brute management force behind an artist is indeed a very interesting concept. Let’s face it, the majority of artists are not business people, just like most musicians. There are countless amounts of incredible artists out there that simply do not know how to market themselves and really could benefit from someone handling that aspect of their career.

Charming Baker himself seems to be the perfect fit for the “Rockstar Artist” push. Known for crazy antics such as blowing holes in his artwork with a shotgun and incorporating drills and saws along with his paint brush definitely seems rock and roll to me.

Pat Magnarella has already made some pretty big moves with Charming Baker, setting him up with an art exhibit in New York at the NY Studio Gallery . The exhibit will run from May 14th till May 30th and will feature some of Charming Baker’s most controversial work such as a painting of Michelle Obama with her face sawn off and stitched back together.

Pat teaming up with the already edgy Charming Baker seems like the perfect fit to see how this experiment will work. Yes, many artists do have managers that help them with the business side of their dealings, but up until this point this is the first time a manager and management company that comes from the music business has stepped up to push an artist, and that to me is why this is so special.

In closing, I absolutely love the idea of artists becoming more prominent figures and “rockstars” in today’s world. Art and music go hand and hand, and I really think that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Give it another couple years and you will be seeing artists creating and selling art on tours such as “Warped Tour” ushering in a youth culture that idolizes artists the way the do musicians.

Make sure to check out all of Charming Baker’s work at: www.charmingbaker.com

I produce my work in three stages. I use Corel Painter 11 for sketching and Adobe Illustrator CS4 for designing.

1) The Sketch

Firstly I sketch my ideas. This allows me to rough out the design and also see how I can expand on my initial ideas. The sketch acts as the foundation for the design I hope to produce. I try to make sure the sketch covers as many elements of the design as possible before moving on to the next stage of the design, smaller details can be added later.

2) The Line-work

I place the sketch in a new Illustrator canvas, reducing the opacity of the image if necessary, and then lock the layer so that I can go over the sketch digitally in a new layer with the pencil tool. I draw everything by hand with the use of a Wacom Cintiq 12WX graphics tablet and name all of my layers for future reference. Once I have gone over the whole sketch, I then hide the locked layer and am left with clear paths to work with. I then group these paths based on what element each set of paths belong to. For example, if there are two characters, I would group the paths belonging to each character separately. This makes it easier to modify, arrange and colour individual elements in the design.

3) Colouring

Once I have finished grouping the paths and arranging all of the elements in the design, I then lock, duplicate (I keep a copy of the line-work layer incase I should need to make alterations at a later date) and hide this layer. I then go through each group and fill the paths with their respective colours, usually working within a five colour limit. When producing the line-work I am only concentrating on drawing and not the relevant position of the line in the design; this can lead to some objects which should be in the front, being at the back and vice versa due to the order in which I drew the paths and / or created the groups. Once everything from each group has been coloured accordingly, I arrange everything so that what should be in the front, is in the front and so on.

Make sure to check out all of Greg’s work at: http://cargocollective.com/gregabbott

Also if you enjoyed this also check out Nils Vogeding’s design article.

When did you first realize you had a talent and passion for art and what drew you to it?

I have been passionate about art as far back as I can remember. As a child I was never able to really express my feelings vocally so I did it through art. Growing up, school was impossibly hard but for some reason art just came easy. If a teacher told us something was to hard to draw I would stop at nothing to draw that very thing. That passionate disregard for the possible is what still pushes me today. Whether it is art, design or advertising I want to push those same boundaries and always explore new ways of problem solving.

Did you get a formal art education, and if so where did you go and how do you feel it shaped you as an artist?

I went to a state college called Murray State University in Murray, KY. It is not formally recognized as an art institute but it is everything you could ever ask for and then some. What shaped me as an artist began very early with observations in the world and finally manifested itself once I discovered graphic design. My design teacher, Jim Bryant, gave me an incredible fundamental base but nobody can teach drive and passion they can only aid it. He was great in answering my questions and pushing me to find new ways of doing something. He quickly began not accepting mediocre work from me and that helped mold me into who I am today.

I must say you are one of the most creative and unconventional artists that I have seen. Where do you find your creativity and what inspires you?

What an amazing compliment first of all. I was born with a gift to make associates between ordinary things. I say it this way because it is the most exciting part of my being. I love to make myself laugh as well as others. I find myself traveling through life as a stand up comedian that never gets on stage but sends his work up instead. I actually am quite inspired by comedians because they make the very same observations but don’t have the visual arm to it. So the thing that inspire me most is really the world around me and how everyone travels through it. Inspiration shows up always when I least expect it. That is why I travel everywhere with a note card and pen in hand or pocket.

So where did you get your alias MurrayMullet?

Murraymullet is a play on where I went to school. Murray State is in a very very small town and prime area for mullets. Business in the front but always a party going on in the back. I don’t mean to knock Murray at all, I love it there, but after my stent there I am very happy to be in a big city again.

Are you an artist that needs to be in a particular mood when creating, or can you just design at any time?

That is a tricky question. Some inspiration can drive me to create that day but days where it isn’t coming as fast I can usually find an older idea in my notes to work on. Anyone that knows me though knows that I am always creating sometime new. It is my biggest passion in life as well as my career.

What has been your favorite piece that you have done and what did you like most about it?

I try not to have a favorite piece. I find that each piece has its own personality and life. Some are instantly more successful than others but I tend to love all my ideas and projects the same. What I try to do each and every time is let the project develop its own message and language.

Who are some artists that inspired you or that you looked up toover the years?

There are many people that inspire me. One of my biggest idols has always be Stefan Sagmeister. He is an incredible designer, thinker and artist. He has an extreme passion for delivering something different and his ability to inspire people is unlike anyone in the design community. Some other amazing thinkers would be Alex Bogusky, David Droga, James Victore, Milton Glaser, Jay Ryan, and I could go on forever. They all bring so many different talents to the table. I think if we could bring people like this to the table we could solve many of the world’s problems.

What is the most rewarding part about being an artist?

There are so many great things that come from being an artist/designer. I love putting my work out there and getting people excited. Wether inside the art community or outside it is so satisfying to make people laugh, inspire, or even motivate them to think differently. Sometimes I will create something and people I am close to immediately write me back with their new ideas because of what I have done. I could have never imagined how exciting and satisfy that is.

Where do you spend most of your time on the web?

The web can be a dangerous place. When I tumble into the rabbit hole I never know where I am gonna end up. I spend most of my time on places like ffffound, tumblr, flickr, threadless, laughingsquid and tons of others. I try to be careful though because those places can influence who you are as a designer and your own voice. I don’t like to use those for idea generation but they are really great places to see what everyone else is doing.

If someone wanted to contact you about possible work are you for hire and how would they do so?

E-mail me, AIM me, Skype me, Twitter, Facebook, Smoke Signals or your favorite way of communicating. Pretty much every site out there I am on in some way or another under Phildesignart or you can always reach me through my website phildesignart.com

Um, hey guys. I’m a girl. And I think it’s really borderline pathetic that you’re still rocking your favorite rock band and Rat Pack posters from the dorms. When someone walks into your home, they want to be surprised and impressed all in one big swoop. You being a grown up with a handsome taste in framed artwork is something no straight woman or gay man can resist.  Problem is, you just don’t know what kind of art you’re looking for. So I’ve compiled a list of a few independent artists whose work you can purchase to start your very own collection at home. Be sure to check back for additional editions soon!

Jonathan Bartlett

His website www.seejbdraw.com describes one of his favorite things as “making sure everyone feels welcome here”. What better way to accent your walls than with the drawings of such a caring artist? Each piece is unique, and some a little more sexy than others. Every work, whether black & white or full on classic colors has a personality of it’s own, but my favorite is pictured above, noted on his site as “Conversation must be an exchange of thought, not an exhibition of wit and oratory”. It’s one of the many strong pieces in his collection of silk screens and drawings.

Brian M. Viveros

His collection is vast, and extremely sexy. If you want to really add some saucy eye candy to your art collection, there is nothing better than owning a piece of Brian M. Viveros art. You can explore all of his mediums at www.brianmviveros.com. Pictured above is the drawing Beware of Dog, which is one of my personal favorites.

Dusty Rabjohn

My favorite thing about Dusty’s work besides the work Dusty puts into each piece, is this part of his artists’ statement, “I strive for simple, provoking images that ask difficult questions of personal responsibility. I attempt to find a corresponding means of rendering that facilitates a vague and incomplete result, in effect, assisting in independent interpretive possibilities.” His work created for the Habeas Corpus Collective show, what look like simple line drawings of America’s favorite heroes with some crazy scared looks on their faces. The works, based on the idea of terror, are actually stunning and all completely recognizable without having a spec of color. Visit all of Dusty’s great works and contact him at http://www.dustyrabjohn.com/. Pictured above is a piece from his collection for Habeas Corpus of Luke Skywalker and Yoda and, clearly, the force is not with them.

Michael Sieben

I’ve been a huge Sieben fan for a few years now, and after seeing his 2009 collection I’m pretty much ready to hang his work on my bedroom walls like a buncha Teen Beat pin ups. His style is on everything from the skateboard brand he co-laucnched, Roger Skateboards, to the walls of Okay Mountain gallery in Austin, TX, and extends to collections all over the globe. It’s doesn’t matter who you are, or who you’re trying to attract – his paintings and prints are all sorts of hunky cool. Explore his site at www.msieben.com and his store at http://shop.msieben.com/ and add an expensive painting, or reasonably priced print to your home collection. Pictured above is Put On A Happy Box from his 2009 fine art collection.

I first realized my passion and talent for art when I realized that I hated reading. Ha!ha! As a child, I loved drawing and enjoyed reading books that had a higher percentage of images than actual words.

My mother would get me into these book clubs and reading wouldn’t stick until she got me my first comic book. I finally started reading but I’d be amazed at the artwork. I’d copy what I saw and eventually started creating my own characters and plots. My parents have always been very supportive of my talents. If I showed interest and dedication to anything, they were behind me 100%. It wasn’t until friends of mine would tell me how cool my drawings were that I knew I had a knack for it. My brother has always been a big fan of my work. When he’d show his friends my work, I knew I had done something cool. My brother and I would even have drawing competitions on family trips. We’d always get a huge laugh out of it. Most of time we were making fun of each other or our parents.

Did you get a formal art education, and if so where did you go and how do you feel it shaped you as an artist?

When I was in grade 10, I was heavily into reading comics. I was a huge fan of Greg Capullo who at the time was the lead pencil artist for Spawn while McFarlane worked at creating his empire. I found out Mr.Capullo was signing at a comic book convention in Toronto during my summer holidays. My family drove 8 hours down to Toronto to visit family and I took one afternoon to get a couple of comics signed. After an hour waiting in line, I finally got to meet him. I didn’t have time for a long conversation, but I asked him: “Do you think people should go to school to be illustrators or in comics?” I was standing there beside my father who just retired recently as a Director of Education and Greg replied by saying: “Nah… You don’t need any of that shit. If you’re good, you’re good. Somebody will find you.” Obviously that didn’t sit well with my father. Regardless of Greg’s advice, I ended up graduating from the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto with an emphasis on Illustration from the Design department. I really do believe that my education made a huge impact on how I draw and how I design. I got to see some amazing artists and designers come out of my graduating class and I’ve always been an observing learner. Most of my instructors were very approachable and helpful to cultivate each person’s talents. All the instructors were working illustrators and designers while they taught so we had great people to look up to. They’d even miss classes because they had meetings with clients. It was all very exciting.

Now you are both an illustrator and graphic designer. Do you have more love for one over the other and how does being both benefit or hinder you?

I’ll always have more love for illustration because it’s something that I created. I didn’t need a mouse to be creative. All I needed was a sharp pencil and some paper. When I was kid, I used to have a bin of old photocopies my dad would bring home from work so that I could draw on the backs of them. I still have most of them.

I think developing my graphic designer brain was more of an economic benefit. Most of the illustrators that I’ve graduated with were hit by this graphics boom and our minds had to become electronic because A. We didn’t land an agent that had the time to go door to door with our portfolios Or B. We couldn’t afford to spend time drawing and painting while the rent needed to get paid. Only a hand full of illustrators would go on to solely do freelance illustration and be successful at it. I had some early success with illustration but found that my electronic style was more sustainable than my editorial style. So I started learning more and more about Adobe products. Some designers out there think that being a jack-of-all-trades is a bad thing. I disagree. It’s like getting your PHD, the more you know the better. I still have a lot to learn and each day I get better at something else that keeps me needed by clients. I’m even now messing with After Effects which takes some work off of my Creative Directors hands.

Are you an artist that needs to be in a particular mood when creating, or can you just design at any time?

I really have to be in a good mood. I procrastinate and sometimes work a lot better in tight situations, but my mood has to be in check. I feel that if I’m in a terrible mood, I tend to forget how to draw and that really gets me pissed. It’s like that dream you always have when you’re running or my case skating (I’m a hockey player) really fast and everyone is passing you with ease. Artistically speaking, if I can’t draw a hand in a certain angle or contortion, you might hear some grunts and sighs. But that’s when I leave the desk and find something other than drawing to do. During my college days in my apartment you’d find little marks all over the walls due to me flinging pencils and crayons in frustration. But that’s when I would do all nighters for projects I had weeks to do them in.

But yes, music, a clean organized environment and a full stomach all lead to a great creative mood.

I’m really digging the your new website layout. Do you do web design as well?

I actually only designed the elements of my website. I just have to give a plug to www.bigblackbag.com who programmed the template. They give you the entire programming framework and you just need to fill in the design and content elements. It’s a quick fix to what I needed at the time and I was really happy with how it came out. One of these days I’ll get into a custom site.

At my day job I have done some web design but not much. I can only do front-end work. I don’t do programming. I think the only real html work I’ve done was back in the Geocities days. I think my site had Comic Sans on it haha! You graphics geeks will know what I’m talking about. I can dabble in Flash but nowhere close to some flash folk out there.

What has been your favorite piece that you have done and what did you like most about it?

The one I got most excited about (excuse my name dropping) was this piece I did for Tony Hawk Skateboard Clothing. I was young and naïve at that time and really needed rent money. I was also fresh out of college. So I would submit work and if they liked it, they would pay for it. That didn’t mean they would use it, and there were no royalties, no usage fees, no nothing, just a small payment for my hard work. Eventually they would tell me that one design would be used in their clothing line. I was so pumped to see it reproduced but they didn’t sell them in Canada. I had to get HR to send me one. A number of months later, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 for Playstation came out. Walking home from my retail job, I decided to spend a quarter of my paycheck on the game. After turning it on, I went to the option of choosing a skater to play as. At this point my jaw dropped. Tony himself was wearing my design on his Video game T-shirt. I was initially totally stoked and called my mom up. My mother being the money savvy lady that she is eventually asked me: “Shouldn’t you be paid for that?” then I sobered up on reality and yea, I should have been paid for it. Live and learn I guess. But the Hawk fellas were good to me. They kept giving me work and it got my foot in the door with different projects after that.

Who are some artists that inspired you or that you looked up to over the years?

Like I mentioned before, I’ve always enjoyed Greg Cappullo’s pencils, Todd McFarlane’s work and Alex Ross’s work amazes me. Frank Miller’s usage of shadows has been a huge influence in my black and white work. Recently though, I’ve been really keeping up with a lot of designers and illustrators on your site, forum boards and on Twitter. Rob Dobi, Hyrdo74, Pale Horse, Godmachine, Kyle Crawford at EZ, Maxx242, OG Abel, Shepard Fairey are some of the recent guys that have made me really excited to be an illustrator.

What is the most rewarding part about being an artist?

You get to go to sleep knowing that you’re being fed by something you’ve been passionate about… something you really worked at and developed. I look at the house my girlfriend and I bought and the two of us know that we couldn’t have done this working shift work in retail or in restaurants. Sure it’s not smooth sailing all the time, but we’re proud of ourselves and we work hard at it. She works in the fashion industry so she understands how my passion drives me.

One particular rewarding time that really got to me though was when my sister (who’s a teacher) asked me to do a show and give her kids a little tutorial if we had time. There was a child with autism in her class who had a helper. The helper told me after my little tutorial on drawing that he’s never seen this student so interested and excited about something before. When art can dive into someone’s psyche so deep that you get a breakthrough, it gives me shivers. I was just happy to let this little guy bring what could be a passion of his forward.

If someone wanted to hire you for a project are you available and how can they contact you?

I’m always looking for new exciting jobs in whatever line of work you’re in. I’m of course very busy, but I’m flexible. I can touch my toes even with this beer gut I possess at the moment.

Anyone interested in contacting me or just to have a look around can visit my website www.paidesign.net and click on my contact tab.

Thanks. Love your site by the way.

There can never be enough monsters in my life. And, what isn’t cool about furry fun little monsters molded into beautiful pieces of functional art that you can have hanging out all over your house? That’s why I’ve got to show you some of the monsters in Joshua Ben Longo’s closet.

The Monster Skin Chair

PETA can’t pour red paint on this, right? The Monster Skin Chair is the perfect seat for the big kid in all of us. The artist shows the careful process it took to create such a cool looking piece of furniture over at his website, Longoland. We think it’s a perfect gift for any new mom looking to add a memorable piece to her nursery.

The Monster Skin Rug

This twisted and completely adorable rug is any trendy kid in making’s childhood fantasy. Who wouldn’t want to curl up to some great bedtime stories on this cuddly, toothy guy? Again, this is great for the nursery, playroom, or living room of a true monster fanatic.

Check out all of artist Joshua Ben Longo’s creations at <a href=”www.longoland.com”>www.longoland.com

Remy’s Ascension is a 16″x 16″ with the actual image size measuring 14.5″ x 14.5″. Each print is
debossed and also signed by Esao. He is only printing 80 and they are $85.00 a piece.

The second print is titled “Off To The Little Village” and measures 11″x 13″ with the image size measuring 9.5″ x 11.5″ As with all of his prints it is debossed and personally signed and limited to 60 prints. It is selling for $75.00

I personally own 3 Esao prints and can vouch for the top notch quality of the print. These would make a great Holiday gift for any art fan on your list!