“Would you like to come up and advise me on my etchings?”
I tend to pick up “stuff to hang on walls” when I travel, as it is a lightweight souvenir. Then, I put the stuff in frames from Ikea. My walls are mostly folk art, street art, prints, batiks and embroidery from various places.
I have a print of a drawing of a badger.
I really like badgers.
I will be 41 in a couple of weeks.
The coolest, cheapest wall art “statement” I saw (on a design show) was very simple. The designer took a calendar with full-page photos and framed each page in a cheap black frame. Then he hung them in a 4x3 grid pattern on the wall over the couch. By the way, he was decorating a bachelor’s apartment.
You can find calendars of just about anything - cars, comics, animals, landscapes, etc. so it can be personalized for your interests. They make a good conversation starter, too.
What’s your budget? My advice is to find whatever night of the month your local artists have all their open houses. They usually coordinate, and they usually congregate together. Maybe there’s some sort of fringe festival this summer. Don’t go to the Art Festival you have to pay to get into - prices are waaay too expensive at those, and the starving artists don’t tend to attend. Anyway, head to the open house/festival, find the biggest piece of art you both like and can afford, and offer the artist 40% less. If they don’t accept, ask them if they have anything similar in size and composition they’d be able to show you. There’s always something you can find that suits your tastes and personality, for your budget. Maybe you’ll even find something quarry-related.
Absolutely. Here is an example with my picture of Donald Duck.
Some other pictures on my wall. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how mature they make me look.
We have a log house; we have an “outdoors” thing going inside. So we have some vintage (looking) snowshoes on our walls. They are actually wall lights, and have lampshades made of topographic maps. We also have cloth hiking boots - a relative sewed them, and they are amazing! A green Christmas wreath with non Christmasy type ornaments that relate to our outdoors theme: some small vintage looking snowshoes, a pair of hiking boots, a log house, etc…I wanted to keep our outdoors theme going to keep the house from looking cluttered and to maintain the overall uniqueness of our house.
Wall calendars, generally with pictures of pleasant scenery. Also, my husband and I are friends with an artist and we’ve bought a number of her prints.
We do some similar things in our cabin, but unfortunately people think that means they should give of us gifts of any rustic outdoorsy crap they run across. It should be a better known rule that you don’t give people home decorations as gifts. We don’t put them up and it takes years to get my wife to throw them away.
Dogs playing poker.
It’s true. We have relatives like that. But we’ve tried to discourage it, also if someone does give us something awful, we can haul it out when they come over and after a year or two retire it to a back corner - ease it out that way.
Our house is kind of eye catching to begin with; if we allow too much “stuff” in it, we have visual clutter, which detracts from the house. Of course, I am not a fan of clutter in any house - tends to make it look junky imho.
This is one of the things we have on our walls.
It’s a 4K (8 MPixel) 50" monitor, which displays photographs I have taken that are stored on a server. The images change every 4 hours. My wife would like to leave them up for days at a time, but I am afraid of screen burn-in.
When I felt it was time to make my apartment look a little more grown-up, I bought some posters mounted on particle board from a shop in the mall:
Flower Piece with Parrot, by Jakob Bogdani
The Temptation of St Anthony, by Salvador Dali
Irises, by Van Gogh
I also took down my poster of a walrus masturbating from “Bizarre” magazine. (Warning: spoiler box links to a picture of a walrus masturbating.)
I have an Amy Crehore Monkey Love series print on my wall.
Mine is The Nibbler and my boyfriend has The Examiner. We purchased them together, and we love her artwork. I like her style.
http://www.amycrehore.com/page10.html
Here is her website:
Gosh, all kinds of things on my walls. A beautiful midcentury modern starburst clock, Chinese propaganda posters (framed, of course), art made by friends, art bought because I like it, Paraguayan Ñandutí, family photos, a portrait of me aged 5 years, a big hunk of home-made felt a friend made for me, some art quilts made by another friend, a gigantic charcoal drawing of pine needles made by my son for a Drawing 101 class, three guitars, a large laminated Union Pacific poster on wood of Sun Valley from the '50s, and in the master bedroom, which I recently redecorated with a Tiki theme, carved wooden tiki gods and other tiki memorabilia, and a large custom made quilt with a midcentury modern/tiki motif. I’ve got at least 3 of my girlfriend’s art pieces up and they’re some of my favorites. I like her style.
I would say that if someone asked me, “What do mature adults put on their walls,” the advice I would give is “Decorate your walls as if you have company and don’t want to offend them or be controversial.” IOW, you want your living space not to reflect who you are, but who you want people to think you are.
- No sex pictures. No nudes, not even tasteful ones
- No pictures of people you don’t personally know. No celebrities, no large pictures of pretty women or good looking men who aren’t friends or family.
- Pictures of landscapes, street scenes, technical and architectural drawings, framed posters , still lifes, nature prints, and astronomical prints are okay.
- I know some people like paintings of historical events. It’s not something I’d put up, but if it’s bland enough, it’s okay. That means no reproductions of the death of Marat.
- Pictures of family and friends, okay.
- Diplomas, and other professional ephemera are okay.
- Interesting artistic or historic subjects that are not portraits are okay. For example, if you have an interest in Japan, reproductions of samurai, landscapes, and entertainers would be a nice touch. If you’re a train guy, pictures of trains and so on.
I’d suggest toning down the sci-fi stuff because it gives an impression you’re stuck in your teens or 20s. OTOH, if the only people visiting you are people your age who come for beer and gaming, put up all the sci-fi you want. But frame them!
Sadly, displaying books to give an impression of maturity and thoughtfulness is a lost art. Stupid Kindle.
I look at the stuff on my walls more than people I’ve invited over. And most of the people invited into my house already know who I am. While I don’t put anything offensive on my walls, I’m not going to modify what goes up based on some vague expectations. I have a very nice framed Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half Century cel on my office wall that isn’t coming down for anyone.
I would say that a cel from a WB cartoon would qualify under Rule #4 ‘technical drawings’. 
I admit that my recommendations are conservative, but for someone who is uncertain about what to put up, I think they’re a good starting place.
BTW, I was speaking of public spaces, like a living room.
I would sure the hell hope not! That’s “pop art,” my man. I’d rather see that than Andy Warhol Campbell’s cans!