About & FAQ
What Is Head West Studio?
Head West Studio is a small group of designers, digital artists, and illustrators living down in Austin, TX. One day, we noticed something peculiar. Despite our professions as creatives, we all had the same problem - a lack of art on our walls. It turned out we were all in the same boat, hopelessly attending gallery shows of our favorite southwestern artists, only to look at the price tag and tell ourselves, "Maybe next time."
It was that day we decided to take matters into our own hands and start creating our own art, ensuring each piece qualifies as something we'd love to hang on our walls, and pricing it so others could fill their empty walls as well.
How Do You Create Your Art?
Our art is created in a variety of different ways. From custom illustrations, to digital photo collages, and even real paintings and illustrations, we're open to any and all techniques! No matter where the piece originated though, each print is digitally cleaned up and resized to get ready for printing and accommodate a variety of frame sizes.
Do You Work With Artists?
One of our main goals at Head West Studio is to expose the incredible talent of western and southwestern artists to more people! So, along with creating our own work in house, we also partner with amazing artists, illustrators, and photographers in our Artist Series. If you're an artist who thinks you'd be a good fit, we'd love to hear from you! Just shoot us a note via our contact page, and we'll send you information on our partnership.
Where Do You Get Your Frames?
While we don't currently have a frame partner that we recommend for your art, many of our customers have found pretty good frames at a good price on Amazon. Here's a round up of different styles for print sizes up to 24x36. For the larger size prints (30"x44" and 36"x48") we recommend reaching out to a custom frame shop, or creating one yourself as we know they can be quite pricey! We're currently working on providing frame options for all sizes on our site, which we're aiming to launch in early 2024!
How Is the Art Printed?
Each of our prints is digitally printed on either a high-quality matte poster paper or a premium, semi-gloss photo paper (depending on the print). We've found the quality to be great, with rich color, high detail, and no indication of printing errors like lines or streaks.
Do You Use AI In Your Art?
At Head West we embrace AI as a tool to inspire and guide our art. In fact, it's one of the reasons we're able to provide our art at the price point that we do. If you've experimented with AI, you know it's far from perfect, and while some prints of ours start with an AI-generated base, all of those pieces still go through hours of digital refining before they're ready for print. It's also important to us that no artist feels like their style is being stolen, and therefore it's our policy to never use artist names or images in our prompts.
Do You Offer Returns?
Being a print-on-demand shop means that your order is specifically created for you. Therefore, we don't accept returns for misplaced orders or customers who may have changed their mind. There's simply nowhere to return it to! If you're unhappy with your print for whatever reason, please contact us to discuss why that is, and what we can do to resolve the issue.
What Do I Do If My Order Arrived Damaged?
If your print comes damaged in any way, please take a picture of the damage and let us know asap! As long as we have pictures of the damage, we can send you out a replacement or issue a refund.
My Print Never Arrived, What Do I Do?
On rare occasions, our good friends at USPS or UPS have lost an item or misplaced it in the back of their truck. If your print is stuck in transit and was never marked as delivered, it's our policy to allow 10 days for a delivery or tracking update. If there's no movement within 10 days, please let us know and we'll send a priority replacement.
If your order is marked as delivered by UPS or USPS, and you did not receive the order, you must file a claim with USPS or UPS. Once USPS or UPS responds to your claim, we're usually able to provide a replacement order (these are handled on a case by case basis).
How Are Your Prints Packaged and Shipped?
Your prints come carefully rolled in an ultra-durable art poster tube. Inside, your prints are wrapped in a protective paper layer. PLEASE OPEN YOUR PRINTS VERY CAREFULLY TO PREVENT TEARING! After opening, we recommend laying them out to flatten with some heavy books or similar objects. After a couple hours they should be good to frame!