The Desktop Wallpaper Project

The Desktop Wallpaper Project is a project based off the of the Radiohead desktop wallpapers I created in 2007 in honor of In Rainbows coming out. But this time around, I decided to write all of my favorite artists and designers, many of which you’ve seen featured on this blog, and see if they’d contribute a wallpaper. As it turns out, my favorite artists and designers happen to be some of the nicest people out there, and so many of them were more than happy to help and be a part of this project.

Here’s the plan: I’ll be releasing one desktop wallpaper every Wednesday morning (California time) until I run out of wallpapers. They’ll be free to download, and come in a multitude of monitor sizes, as well as iPhone and PSP versions just for the fun of it. I hope you enjoy them all!

Good morning everyone! First off I just wanted to say sorry for not putting up the DWP the last two weeks. I really have no excuse other than being really busy and not setting enough time aside to do it. So hopefully this weeks triple attack will make up for it?! This weeks artist is one of my favorite illustrators, a guy who’s style I’ve been a fan of for years now. His name is Nathan Fox, and I’ve definitely written about him before on the site. Recently he just finished an awesome comic called Pigeons in Hell, which is based off of a Robert E. Howard story. Mr. Fox was gracious enough to give me three wallpapers to use, so I figured since I didn’t post the last 2 weeks, this might make up for it a little bit.

These wallpapers all remind me of the Derby Dolls I saw on Saturday, featuring sexy chicks who could kick your ass. The first one is some sort of trippy, 3D explosion, with the lady making some sort of crazy mess… I really don’t know what it is, but I love the randomness of it. The next one seems straightforward enough, but can you spot the difference? The last one is totally random as well, featuring a busty young gal squeezing her favorite octopi stuffed animal.

Morning everyone! Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday… new wallpaper! This week’s artist is Andy Miller, and he’s one of those fresh up-and-coming types who’s really hitting his stride. Checking out his site he’s done projects with The Yellow Bird Project, Paul Paper, and Infectious Art, along with a ton of other great person pieces like his Poison Apple wallpaper which needs to be made into real wallpaper. A funny sidenote, when I asked Andy to do the project, he wrote me back the very next day saying, “After you asked me last night about the wallpaper, I couldn’t quit working on it!”, and thus the wallpaper above was born.

I think this wallpaper is really great, there’s just so much going on, but it’s not overwhelming to me. The colors are really fun, and I love all the textures he threw in there as well. I also love the little owl friend poking his out from the big YOU, he’s cute. If you’ve got an iPhone, be sure to check out the iPhone version, it looks really dang good. I hope you all enjoy this one!

Good morning everyone! Today’s wallpaper comes from someone that I’ve really admired for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually written about him before. His name is Christopher David Ryan, and he’s an absolutely prolific designer. On his personal site, he does a daily design, something a lot of people talk about doing, but in Chris’ case, he has 10 months worth of proof. Then there’s his other site Atmostheory, which features projects and other fun stuff he’s created. And if that wasn’t enough, he even has a shop called My Little Underground which has things for sale like books and posters, all of which are affordable and totally beautiful.

For Chris’ wallpaper he came up with a bold and simple design, a bunch of hands holding record sleeves and pulling records out of the sleeves at the same time, all in a brightly colored gradient. I’ve got this up on my second screen at work and it looks really good. On a sidenote, Chris also gave me another image he made a while back that I might need to release as well, so you might be seeing him again on the DWP!

Good morning everyone! Hump day means a new wallpaper, and today is an exceptionally bright one, something especially important as the weather starts to get a little more gray, at least here in the northern hemisphere. This week’s wallpaper was created by Matias Vigliano, better known by Parquerama, an illustrator and graphic designer from Buenos Aires. Parquerama’s work is always filled with tons of colors and a lot of the time there are spacemen floating about as well.

For his wallpaper he created an image of soem sort of space guy getting attacked by vines, as he struggles to keep himself afloat by hanging on to a tram line, haha… Or at least that’s what I see, your guess as to what’s going on is as good as mine! But I really love the colors of this piece and all the textures are totally superb. Thanks Parquerama!

Bobby

Oh snap it’s Wednesday, I swear the days go by so fast! This week’s wallpaper is sort of a continuation from the last post, celebrating my roommate’s publication in Feasthetic #9. So I thought it was quite fitting to also give away the wallpaper he made for me as well! His name is Garrett Vander Leun, I’ve known him since I was 8, and he’s one of my favorite artists in the world. Drawing since he was a little, kid, his sketchy style has evolved from Bart Simpson doodles to the magnificent beast you see above. He’s done artwork for bands and movies and can basically draw everything in the world. We’re also working on a t-shirt design as well, so you all might want to keep your eye for that as well…

For his wallpaper above he decided to go with a tribute to Bill Murray, one of the finest actors out there. There are quotes from all of Bill’s movies, as well as visual references to many of them as well. I loved going through here and trying to figure out where all these quotes came from. Some of the images as well, like the purple heart on the side of the car, are pretty random, but make sense if you can figure it out. I hope you all love this as much as I do!

Good morning! I hope everyone has a had a good week so far, it seems like it’s flying by for me personally. Today’s wallpaper comes all the way from Stockholm, created by a wonderful young man by the name of Andreas Samuelsson. Andreas has this uncanny knack for making work that looks extremely simple and beautiful at the same time. He’s also amazing at using off-kilter color choices, something that still perplexes me to this day. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Arkitip, he has his own If You Could poster… the guy is definitely a rising star.

His wallpaper is an awesome blend of shapes, letters, and symbols, which are all kind of remind me of the blog. I LOVE the face with the giant jaws on the back of it’s head, I’m guessing that could be a rabid black fox perhaps? The 100% wool tags and the Asian tea pots are also rather rad as well. Definitely check this out on the iPhone as well, it looks really sweet.

Going through my folder of desktop wallpapers, I sometimes lose track of some amazing gems that I still have to give away to you all, and this wallpaper is a fine example. The artist is a guy named Ryan Quincy, a fellow who wrote me in March asking if he could submit a design to the DWP. I checked out his work and thought it was pretty funny, plus he happens to be the animation director on South Park (seriously, IMDB him) so I thought he might come up with something pretty sweet. I also asked him if his piece could be painted, and awesome enough he actually said yes!

The wallpaper itself is pretty rad, in fact it almost looks like it was painted directly onto an old desktop, something I think is genius. It’s filled with all sorts of Ryan’s little critters and creations, flying through the air off to do something magical I’m sure. I love all the colors and shapes, and it’s kind of funny but there’s even room for icons, at least for us Apple folk. I think it’s also cool to have a change a pace from all the computer drawn wallpapers to something that’s been done lovingly by hand. Awesome job Ryan, thanks for the sick wallpaper.

This weeks artist is the immensely creative and awesome Undoboy! I wrote Undoboy to do the DWP a looooong time ago, and since then he’s been blowing up like crazy, as I’m sure many of you have seen the crazy wall decals he did for Blik.

For his wallpaper he created these fun little characters, ninjas of sorts, that rumor has it he might be turning into vinyl figures! But he also decided to make a mini-comic wallpaper showing how one of the guys got that ninja start stuck in his head. These are nice and simple with lots of bright colors, so this one should definitely please the minimalists! Also be sure to check out the iPhone versions, I thought they were really fun as well.

It’s already Wednesday, the week is nearly half over, and it’s time to change your wallpaper! This week’s artist is one of my absolute favorites, his use of bright colors and bold shapes always brings a smile to my face. All the way from Barcelona everyone… Mr. Emil Kozak! Emil is originally from Denmark and has been creating since he was a little Kozak, since then working for companies like Vans, Graniph, Lego, Element Skateboards and a ton more. Most recently he did these crazy surfboards for surf god Kelly Slater which pretty much destroy everyone.

It pains me to say this, but I’ve been sitting on this design for a while, not wanting to release EVERYTHING awesome right away. It’s hard to see awesome designs like these not being put to good use! I love how big, bold, and graphic this design is, and it really works well as the iPhone background, as it’s currently in use on my own. My favorite touch is the sublminal ‘emil’ in the background, as well as the awesome color palette. Thanks again Emil!

Today’s wallpaper comes from the amazingly incredible Laura Laine, whom I specifically didn’t blog about previously so that her wallpaper might be more of a surprise.

Laura is probably one of the very best fashion illustrators around today, her style is crisp and flawless and her women are about as sexy as you can possibly draw them. Her style is like none I’ve ever seen before, these beautifully, lithe women with immense floating hair and statuesque faces… I really can’t say enough about her work, she’s truly a genius.

For her wallpaper she incorporated probably the cuddliest fox the site has seen so far, but the image isn’t quite as simple as it looks. If you check out one of the larger versions, you start to see that the images aren’t exactly the same, that there are some minor, but awesome, differences between them. Honest to god, as I was getting the images ready, I spotted another one I hadn’t see before, haha… I hope you all love this wallpaper as much as I do, I’m pretty sure all of your co-workers will be pretty dang jealous!

Morning everyone! It’s Wednesday so thankfully we all get to liven our desktops and I think everyone should be extra excited about this weeks. The artists name is Dave Franzese, a Brooklyn based artist who introduced himself to me a couple months ago through one of the best written emails ever. Long story short he wanted to do a wallpaper and after looking through all of his work I immediately said yes. A few weeks later he already had his wallpaper to me, not wasting any time at all. Dave currently is freelancing like a floozy, as he’s done work for clients like The New York Times, Vice, Converse, Yves Saint Laurent, as well as making lots of awesome shit for LVHRD.

I think this wallpaper is hysterical, as it’s a take on the old board game Operation, where you have to carefully remove the parts out of the patient without touching the edges. I’m not sure if everyone int he world knows what the game is, so that’s why I described it and included the link! But to me these doctors look a little cracked out, I mean one doesn’t even have his pants on. Also of interest, if you’re on a Mac and you have a lot of icons on your screen, increase the icon size to 84 x 84 and it’ll look like the doctor is pulling an icon out of the patient! AWESOME!

Happy Wednesday everyone! I can’t believe the week is already at it’s halfway point! Since I like to mix things up here on the DWP, I’ve decided to go with an extremely lo-fi approach this week. I was also partially influenced by seeing this week’s artist at Simpleasures in all of his bearded glory. This week I’m proud to announce Mr. Travis Millard, one of my absolute favorite artists and the genius behind Fudge Factory Comics. Ever since I first came across Travis’ work I’ve been pretty obsessed, with all the face ripping, fist fights, and all the gritty details in-between.

This weeks wallpaper is actually taken from a tiny piece that Travis did, it’s maybe 3″ x 4″, but I love it because now you can see all those tiny details. To me this wallpaper totally looks like a big, menacing fart cloud, and who wouldn’t want one of these as their work background? Just tell your co-workers that if they keep bothering you that you’ll this thing will mess their day up.

Good morning world, it’s Wednesday, which means it’s time to get an awesome new wallpaper! Today’s artist is someone I’ve been a fan of for a little while now, but when I first saw his art I was totally impressed. His name is James Gulliver Hancock and he’s quite a whiz at illustration, though as you can see above he has no problem dabbling in mixed media as well. He also has a really great poster shop with lots of fun posters, my personal favorite being Miking Up the Steinway, a beautiful mix of pianos and old school microphones.

The wallpaper above is one of my favorites, James went above and beyond the call of duty with this one. I love that it’s a collage a lot, the idea that it’s something hand made being used as digital background always makes me smile. Seeing all the details is also pretty amazing, all the paint strokes and the rough edges where he cut out pieces, definitely fun times. I’m also quite a fan of the palette, which I’m pretty sure he just hit the inverse command in Photoshop, but how often can someone do that and it actually looks cool?!

SELECT and I are proud to offer this awesome wallpaper from the amazing Andy Rementer. Andy created this design for SELECT but was rad enough to make it into a happening wallpaper for you all. The design on the t-shirt is actually front and back, but he merged them together to make one epic part of a design. Definitely check out the rest of Andy’s work as well, I got all kinds of flustered when I saw this rad Reference Library sign he painted.

The last Wednesday of the month has finally arrived which means I can reveal the winners of the first DESKTOP BATTLE! Almost everything I got was amazing and it was really hard to chose a winner but here they are in order

Our first place winner is Brad Haubrich. Brad resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, grew up drawing and skateboarding, and really hasn’t changed much over the years. I really love this image because as Brad describes it, ” It’s a ghost riding on a bike with everything he owns.” Ghost kitties and ghost umbrellas are pretty awesome, plus it makes for a great desktop with lots of free space for icons. Congrats Brad on being the CHAMPION!

Second place goes to Veronica Hebard, who’s way artsy fartsy and went to school at SVA in NYC and MassArt in Boston. Right now she’s illustrating three comics for independent publishers and working on projects with Image and DC Comics. When I first opened this image the first thing that struck me were the colors. I love the colors A LOT; the bright pinks, blues and greens compliment each other and give the scene a feeling of movement. Also, the anime influence, sort of reminds me of James Jean but doensn’t feel like a ripoff.

Gary Goa, the third place winner, is a web developer who dabbles in illustration and photography. Gary got the idea for this image from two places: his fascination with old cameras and the idea that they were once thought to steal your soul. I love ghosts and cameras. Cameras in some cultures are known to steal your soul so this whole idea of ghosts paired with cameras seems like a natural fit.

It’s Wednesday and I’ve got to admit, I’m hella excited about today’s wallpaper. I’ve basically got this giant trove of wallpapers just waiting in the wings to be given to you all, so it’s really exciting when I get to give away one of my absolute favorites. Today’s artist is none other than the amazing Noah Butkus, a man known for his psuedo-comic book style drawings that are filled with all sorts of odd and abstract images. When I first came across Noah’s artwork I was immediately in love, I had this complete gut reaction to what I was seeing and I immediately wanted to see more and more.

For The DWP Noah sent me this awesome sketch he did of one of his hooded, ghost men riding a skateboard and snapping a giant sword in half with his bare hands. This for me, is fucking amazing, haha… I think this appeals to me inner child a lot, there’s swords, blood, skateboarding, I don’t really need anything more than that. I think I’ve had this image for months now, and I’ve just been waiting for the perfect time to show it. I’ve also though about getting it tattooed on me, I honestly am into it that much. Hopefully you all feel the same way I do!

Hey everyone, it’s Wednesday, new DWP, YAY! I had late start this morning, so I apologize for the tardiness! Anywho, this weeks artist is one of my favorite illustrators out there right now. He’s always extremely consistent, has an amazing knack for colors, and until recently was a fellow Angeleno! The fellow I’m talking about is the awesome Josh Cochran! I’ve been a big fan of Josh for a while now, I’ve posted about him on a couple of occasions, and going through his work always makes me happy. He also has a killer print shop with a ton of great stuff for sale, something to definitely check out.

As you can see in the wallpaper above, he didn’t screw around, bringing some serious detailed loveliness to the piece. As per usual, I’m not really sure what’s happening, but there’s a dude photographing some cosmic rays while trying to eat a sandwich, the dude in back is getting really old, really fast, the guy on the right is barfing, there are some space jellys floating around, a flux capacitor at the top… so much awesome stuff! Josh is going to be releasing a print of the wallpaper in the coming months, so when it’s available I’ll be sure to let you all know!

I’m also only releasing this in a few sizes, it would be silly to cut off anything. So if you have a smaller monitor, simply make the background black and make it look like a letterbox movie, got it? But you also get three iPhone wallpapers, so choose which chunk you like best!

Good morning and happy Wednesday! It’s gray and chilly here in LA, so hopefully it’s nicer out wherever you are. This week I decided to bust out the big guns, giving you three wallpapers to choose from, thanks to the wonderful Nik Daum. It’s funny because Nik seems like such an oddity to me, and I mean that in a really good way. He’s probably one of the funniest designers out there, as you can totally tell when you visit his site, but he’s also one of the most talented, doing some amazing work for clients like Old Spice, HP, and Jamba Juice. One of my absolute favorite things he did were these t-shirts for Old Spice, including one that reads, “My other shirt is a boat”, haha…

Now he’s hooked us up with three great wallpapers, all in totally different styles to fit your mood. The first is a trio of highlighter birds of paradise, to take you away from the drudgery of your work day. The second completely illustrates the how crappy your work day is and how you’re all going to die soon, and the third is deep and dark and reminds me of an old Russian cartoon. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do, I pretty much freaked out when I saw them.

Because today is Wednesday, you still get a wonderful wallpaper, this one courtesy of the guys at Gama-Go, since they were kind enough to hook you guys up with prizes! For some reason or another, Deathbot is totally pissed off and throwing these giant-spiky-mountain things around. I don’t know what his deal is, but makes for an awesome wallpaper, and it looks particularly great on my iPhone. Be sure to check back next week for another awesome wallpaper and be sure to get started on your ghosty drawings! I’m so excited to see what you all come up with!

Hey look, it’s Wednesday! This week’s DWP artist hails all the way from Montréal, Canada and has to be one of the nicest guys I’ve met through the blog. Oh yeah, and he’s an really awesome artist! I came across Neil Doshi’s work last year some time and was really impressed by his immense creativity and his love of patterns. I even got to meet him as he traveled through California on a secret mission and he was an extremely down to earth guy who was very thoughtful and really into his art. He’s also been rather busy as well, with two big projects that have come out in the last few months. First he had a shirt put out by The Quiet Life called Right On Fight On, the proceeds of which went to The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to help find a cure.

More recently he’s joined up with Engrave Your Book, creating a design called Drawing Yourself Into a Corner which you can have laser engraved onto a crazy amount of items. He’s also decided to share a modified version of this awesome design so you can have it on your desktop was well! I love all the crazy details and patterns he put into the piece, it’ll definitely keep your eyes busy!

One of the things I’m really trying to push lately is to get art from younger, less established artists, who still totally make some great work. That’s the case with Mr. Artur Neufeld up there, a 17 year old artist from Germany who I cam across through the Behance Network. One day Artur decided he wanted to learn how to use Photoshop and 3D Studio Max, and now he’s cranking out awesome pieces like the one above.

I had seen another piece that Artur did using 3D Max to create beautiful fonts in these rather calm, urban environments, so I was hoping he could do something similar to that. Instead, he did this amazing chase scene with the words Kitsune Noir being the unfortunate victim of a hit and run. I love all the bits and shards flying everywhere in this photo, you can stare it this forever. This is also the first time a photo has been used in the DWP, not counting Dash Shaw’s cat, haha…

This weeks wallpapers (yep, plural) were created by the phenomenally talented Kristina Collantes. Kristina lives and works in California where she draws inspiration for her work from things like wallpaper, textiles, and Japanese art. When I first saw her work I as sooooo impressed by the amazing amount of detail she puts into each piece. When I asked her to do the project I was a little skeptical that she would say yes, but fortunately she knew of the blog and the project, which leads us to right now!

Kristina decided to make not one but two different designs for today, both of them lovely and awesome. The first one is aptly titled Skulls, while the second one is titled Blues. Those actually might not be their names, but that’s what the files were called, so it works for me. I’m totally into those soft and cuddly skulls, I love how the texture is really delicate, but it’s all shaped into a skull. The other one I love because of that pattern in the background, which totally destroys everyone, and the big K and N shapes. Also, the colors on both of those are the best.

Alright, it’s Wednesday again, which means it’s definitely time to change your desktop. As sort of in an inside look at how I go about picking people to do the project, most of the time it’ll be people that I’ve previously posted about. Obviously if I take the time to write about them then I must like their style a whole lot… but this isn’t always the case, as today’s artist I instead immediately wrote to see if they’d create a wallpaper. So today I’m happy to present, Ryan Cox.

Ryan is an illustrator who lives in New York and is the master of poppy vector illustrations. When I first went through his site I literally scrolling back and forth, soaking in all of the shapes and colors. Honestly his style reminds me of a more computer-savvy Charley Harper, his shapes and objects are so minimal but they have such a presence nonetheless.
For his wallpaper, I imagine this is what a really awesome Kitsune Noir party would look like. I’d be the dude taking photos in the top right, there’s the little black foxy in the bottom right, and plenty of inanimate objects and hot girls dancing all over the place… totally awesome. I also created 3 iPhone wallpapers just in case some of you had a favorite portion of the overall piece.

One of my favorite things about The Desktop Wallpaper Project is that I get to meet people from all over the world. Before I started this blog my world was rather small, consisting of mostly places in California, a few random cities across the US, and everything I’ve read in magazines. But now I’ve got friends like Mr. Merijn Hos, an awesome illustrator and all around crafty guy from Utrecht, Netherlands. Currently he’s working on some ultra-secret projects that he can’t talk about, and recently Merijn had a book come out called Black and White Drawings by Bfree, which features his favorite drawings from the last 5 years.

As for his wallpaper, I love how random and cute it all is. All of the drawings were selected from an installation he did earlier this year. But then he wrote that, “I did the drawings in a time limit of 3 minutes each pretending I was a stuffed doll on a weird substance that could be seen in the installation.” To check out what he’s talking about you can click here, it’s pretty crazy.

This week’s artist is a guy named Tessar Lo, who was born in Indonesia, graduated from the Sheridan Institute in illustration and now calls Los Angeles his home.

I fell in love with Tessar’s work as soon as I saw it. His line work looks so flawless, his colors are spot are well chosen and i love how ethereal it all is, especially this week’s wallpaper. I think it’s so rad that he was able to merge women, water, plants, fish AND black foxes all into one beautiful little swirl. When I opened this up in my inbox my obvious reaction was, “holy shit.” I hope you guys enjoy it all as much as I do!

Last week a reader named Sarah wrote in the comments that she’d like to see a female artist here in the DWP, so Sarah, I’d like to present this week’s contributor, Olimpia Zagnoli. Olimpia is an Italian illustrator who’s work I posted about recently and immediately wrote her to see if she’d make a wallpaper. I was immediately drawn to her linework and color choices, and I knew she’d come up with something amazing.

As you can see above, her wallpaper turned out awesome. The simplicity of the the wallpaper is awesome, and the shapes are totally beautiful. And it’s such a small detail, but I would never have thought to put a pink circle thing at the top corner like that, but for some reason that little detail really makes it pop. I kind of feel like the wallpaper is telling some sort of Godard-esque tale about cheating lovers in Paris, couldn’t you see that? Okay, maybe I just have an overactive imagination…

This week’s artist is the amazing Kelsey Brookes, a guy who is not only an amazing painter, but a rather nice guy as well. Kelsey hails from San Diego where he used to be a scientist, but that went out the door and now he paints incredibly detailed and beautiful pieces of art.

Kelsey cmade the wallpaper above from a piece he did for the Semi-Permanent event in Sydney, but I figured that about 4 of you have probably ever seen this and you all would love it. As per usual the image has tons of details and and the most amazing choices in colors. I love the area around the skull at the top, like an old blanket you might find in your grandparent’s house. Also be sure to check out the iPhone wallpapers as well, the amount of detail in them is pretty rad.

This weeks wallpaper comes from the uber-talented Tavis Coburn, and is definitely one of the fancier wallpapers. Tavis went to the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena, California where he earned a fine art degree. Nowadays he’s headquartered up in snowy Toronto where he works for clients like ESPN, Nike, Entertainment Weekly and The Discovery Channel. He also has an amazing online print store that sells his work, definitely something to check out.

As for his wallpaper, I love it for multiple reason. The first is because of the amazing style it’s done in. It totally looks like it could have ben created 50 years ago, with the faded whites and halftone patterns all over. Secondly, I love how frigging random this is. A giant dude chewing on the backboard of a basketball hoop? The way it’s framed is pretty clever as well, with not as much info as you’d like to be shown. My last favorite part is that this looks like a fat-boy version of me, or at least I think so. I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, but I hope it was!

The artist of this fantastic wallpaper is a guy named Dash Shaw. Dash is a 25 year old SVA grad who is currently living in Brooklyn. I found Dash through this amazing Dr. Strange spread he did for the still-yet-unreleased Marvel Indie Anthology, but since then he’s been quite busy! Coming up in June he has a 720 page graphic novel called The Bottomless Belly Button which is being published by Fantagraphics (check out photos here), and he also runs a weekly comic on his own site called BodyWorld.

Honestly though, the first time I laid eyes upon the wallpaper you see above, my immediate reaction was, “What the hell is this?!” But then I read Dash’s description which said:

This is someone’s life story told in desktop icons.
The icons read from left to right, like a comic. This
person has passed away and his desktop is all that we
know about his life. He loves his cat.

At that point I started laughing my ass off, realizing what an effing genius he is. I hope you all enjoy this wallpaper as much as I do. I think it’s so damn clever how the icons have double meanings, how spot on the icons represent life, and how in the end we all end up in the recycling bin.

The magnificent piece you see above is by the one-of-a-kind illutrator, Dan Funderburgh. Dan has become one of my favorite artists over the last couple years, mostly due to his immense talent in creating the most amazing repeating patterns and wallpapers. And I’m not the only one who sees his genius, seeing that folks like Flavor Paper have made real life versions of his amazing patterns.

For the wallpaper you see above, it’s so simple, and yet it’s so damn complex at the same time. It’s like he’s restrained and eccentric at the same time? The details in the umbrella are absolutely amazing, and the simple brown and cream color palette is drool-worthy. I’d also like to point out that I made two different iPhone and PSP wallpapers, the first showing the complete image, and the second is a completely crisp detail image of the umbrella, just because I couldn’t resist. One of my absolute favorites.

This week I decided to stray away from hand-drawn images and move toward something a little more digital. This week’s wallpaper was created by the awesome folks over at Mopa, a Brazilian design firm. Mopa is made up of five extremely creative people, Alline Luz, Daniel Gizo, Felipe Mello, Felipe Medeiros, and Rogério Lionzo. I came across their work last year and fell in love with their amazing use of color, as you can see above. I really love this design because it works really well in the more traditional sense of what a desktop background usually is, but at the same time is completely wild and beautiful unlike many background designs.

I was lucky enough to meet Mike Perry last summer when I helped out with The Parking Lot Art Show, getting to watch him staple up about a million pages of newspaper in the back of an extremely hot U-Haul! Some people might know him from his extremely popular art book, Hand Job, all about hand drawn fonts, and he’s also running a magazine called Untitled a. You can also see him from time to time gracing the pages of the Dwell, NY Times Magazine, and Readymade, as well as skate decks and all manner of things.

Mike was kind enough to give us all TWO designs this week, one is a sort of a castle-car, the other a really awesome explosion of colors and patterns. I’ve used these as my background for weeks at a time, and they both look amazing, though the pattern one might give some people seizures, so don’t even try to sue us.

This was actually the first wallpaper Mcbess did for me, but it accidentally got released early, so I freaked out and asked him if he could make me a new one. Thankfully he was totally awesome about the situation and agreed to do it. But ever since then it really bothered me that this design never got used, seeing as how amazing it is. So here it is, an impromptu Desktop Wallpaper Project entry in honor of Kitsune Noir’s first birthday!

The wallpaper above was created by the extremely talented Jean Jullien, a London based artist and designer. I posted about Jean early this year after seeing the amazing ongoing visual diary he keeps.

Something about the way Jean creates reminds me a lot of Michel Gondry, like he just creates all the things pop into his head. Looking through his site I fell in love with all of the amazing papercraft things he came up with, so I asked him to use that skill to create an awesome wallpaper. I totally love what he came up with, totally effective and beautiful and works really well as a desktop wallpaper. I also really like that it’s handmade, getting away from computers for a little bit.

On a sidenote, I asked some French friends about why the words shooting of the gun says “PAN!” instead of “BANG!”? Turns out it’s the cultural difference. In France they say PAN! instead of BANG! to make the sound of a gun, much like dogs say something other than BARK! in other countries. I always love learning little things like that.

Yay Wednesday! Hopefully you’re having a miserable day so far which is now going to be turned completely around by what you see above. This week’s wallpaper is brought you all by the extremely talented Rey Ortega. Rey is a Toronto based illustrator who graduated last summer from the Sheridan Institute of Design. Since graduating he’s been drawing up a storm including creating pieces for an upcoming show at the Pony Club in Portland that opens on April 3rd. I personally came across Rey’s work from his participation in the I Am 8-Bit show at Gallery 1988 last summer. Since then I’ve been keeping tabs on Rey and his work and had to ask him to participate in the project.

The piece above is titled ‘Fantômes’, and when I opened my email and saw this I just about shit myself. I couldn’t believe all the detail and effort Rey went to, and I had a feeling of utter excitment that didn’t go away for days. He describes the piece in pretty simple terms as a bunch of ninjas chasing after a fox over some French rooftops. So it’s a little bit Japanese, a little bit French, perfect for Kitsune Noir. Here’s a little bit more he had to say about the piece:

The wallpaper image, called ‘Fantômes’ is one of the largest pieces I’ve done yet, the original is 15″ x 26″. I tried to leave a decent amount of open space at the top half of the art, that way desktop icons can be easily seen, for both mac and pc users!

I hope you all enjoy his wallpaper as much as I do! One of my absolute favorite parts about the whole thing is the +KN that he hid in there… can you guys find it?

This weeks desktop comes from the master of self-portraits and multi-colored gems, Dustin Hostetler, also known as UPSO. Dustin is one of the busiest guys out there right now running artsy magazine Faesthetic, a studio called Sans Nom with his wife Jemma, and working as the brainchild behind Threadless’ Select line of t-shirts, not to mention random art projects here and there.

His design above was one of my favorites, I mean, who doesn’t love crazy colored gems falling from the sky? And let me tell you, it look so effing rad on the iPhone, all of the bright colors on the black background is amazing.

Tim Biskup is one of those artists that I’ve admired for years now and consider to be one of the best out there. I first came across his artwork on a Gama-Go t-shirt which I bought in Villains on Haight Street. It was a design called Gama Turtle, a giant blue monster with some janky looking teeth and a massive spiked shell. Since then he’s created vinyl figures, giant murals and fine art that’s hung in galleries all over the world.

In his wallpaper is a little character he created called Calli, which in real life are cardboard cut-outs which turn into tiny stackable figures. I oddly enough bought a bunch of these as X-mas and birthday presents for friends, unbeknownst to Tim when he was creating this. In between the figures is the kanji for Black Fox, aka Kitsune Noir.

Mcbess is the alias of Matthieu Bessudo, an amazing illustrator who lives in France and graduated from the art school Supinfocom in 2006. I came across Matthieu because of an awesome little animation project he helped work on called Sigg Jones, which was one of the best things I watched all last year. He ended up sending me a link and I was totally blown away by his style, somewhere between old Disney cartoons and anime. I honestly have no idea what’s going on in the wallpaper above, but I’m absolutely in love with it, and I’m sure that Mcbess is going to become a huge star in the illustration world.

Our last wallpaper for today comes from IMAKETHINGS, better know by friends and loved ones as Andrew Groves. Andrew is a British illustrator who’s style borders on the edge of creepy and cute. His art is inhabited by tons of black creatures with bright white teeth and red eyes. But then he places them into the magically colorful backgrounds, and for some reason they don’t seem so scary any more, just awesome.

The image above is some sort of haunted forest, or so I’d guess. I’m especially fond of the floating crystals which are also hanging out, though I doubt they’re haunted. The color of this wallpaper alone instantly made it one of my favorites.

 

Right now:

I'm looking for an artist who can get me 3 simple pieces by Monday, paid gig. Email me if you're interested: thefoxisblack@gmail.com