Artist Ken Walters sells his work in the virtual world Second Life, as well as in real life to galleries, individuals and companies.

I met Ken when he attended one of my training workshops for creative people in business and I was fascinated by his personal story as well as his artwork. A feature in The Guardian tells how a stroke made him into an artist, giving him another kind of ‘second life’ after previously working as an engineer, without any kind of artistic training. He now runs a successful creative business from his home in the North of England.

He has combined his new talents as an artist with a marketing strategy which includes a variety of online and virtual media including Second Life. Ken also publicises his work through social networking sites and has published images in the “T-Shirts and Suits (Creativity and Business)” international group for creative people in business within Facebook. His income is derived from direct sales and through the licensing of his intellectual property.

Global corporation EA Games were impressed with his work and commissioned him to design 100 digital dinosaurs for a new educational game called Spore. Ken retains ownership of the copyright in the designs and gets a cut of merchandise sales as part of the licensing agreement. In this way he is developing additional income streams as a Creative Entrepreneur.

Ken Walters can be contacted by email ([email protected]) and his website address is http://www.kwdag.biz/. His character name in Second Life is Blunt Fhang.

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