Day 170: KAWS

KAWS was born Brian Donnelly in Jersey City, New Jersey. He began his career as a graffiti artist growing up in Jersey City, New Jersey. Later moving to New York City in the 1990s, KAWS started subverting imagery on billboards, bus shelters and phone booth advertisements.

In the late 90s, KAWS began to design and produce limited edition vinyl toys. More toys and later clothing were made for Original Fake, a recent collaborative store with Medicom Toy. One of KAWS' early series, Package Paintings, was made in 2000. This series, entitled The Kimpsons, subverted the famous American cartoon, The Simpsons.

Download the PDF file here and make your own KAWS toy!

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Day 139: Artist's Special #4 - Keith Haring

Fourth in our artist-inspired series - Keith Haring...

Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s. Haring achieved his first public attention with chalk drawings in the subways of New York. His bold lines, vivid colors, and active figures carry strong messages of life and unity.

By expressing concepts of birth, death, love, sex and war, Haring's imagery has become a widely recognized visual language of the 20th century.

Download the PDF file here and make your own Haring toy!

Find out what's our next toy on our Facebook page!

Day 138: Artist's Special #3 - Kazimir Malevich

Third in our artist-inspired series - Kazimir Malevich...

Kazimir Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician of Polish descent, pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.

Download the PDF file here and make your own Malevich toy!

Warhol, Lichtenstien, Haring? Find out who's next in the Artist's series on our Facebook page!

Day 137: Artist's Special #2 - Piet Mondrian

Second in our artist-inspired series - Piet Mondrian...

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter. He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colours.

Download the PDF file here and make your own Mondrian toy!

Pollock, Matisse, Malevich? Find out who's next in the Artist's series on our Facebook page!

Day 136: Artist's Special #1 - Pablo Picasso

Over the next few days, I'll be posting a series of artist-inspired toys as a tribute to the artists I admire. Today, I present you the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso...

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Download the PDF file here and make your own Picasso toy!

Mondrian, Miro, or Dali? Find out what's next in the Artist's series on our Facebook Fan page!

Day 82: OBEY Giant

The OBEY Giant is a street art icon created by the artist Shepard Fairey. It started out as a street art campaign called "Andre the Giant Has a Posse", based on an image of the wrestler Andre the Giant the artist created in 1986. Over time the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and has become a worldwide movement, and stylistically and semantically evolved into the OBEY Giant.

Download the free PDF file here and make your own OBEY Giant toy!

Day 80: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) was a Mexican painter, who has achieved great international popularity. She painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico as well as by European influences that include Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Many of her works are self-portraits that symbolically express her own pain and sexuality. In 1929 Kahlo married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Her "Blue" house in Coyoacán, Mexico City is a museum, donated by Diego Rivera upon his death in 1957.

Download the free PDF file here and make your own Frida toy!

Day 18: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhola (August 6, 1928 - February 22, 1987), better known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist and a central figure in the movement known as pop art. It was in the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of famous American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans, as well as paintings of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

PDF here!