Hello everyone! I’ve just posted a bunch of photos from an extremely enjoyable photo shoot I did in Detroit last month.  I’ve been Flickr buddies for a long time now with Tyler Linner, a transportation design student at CCS. Recently he purchased a winter beater car, a first-gen Ford Probe, and has been customizing it into a hyper-miling aero art car (complete with dazzle camouflage!) I knew, once I saw it, that I would have to photograph it!

We found a suitably angular backdrop, and were joined by the lovely Amanda Faye Cain for some avant-garde photo fun-time. She did an amazing job, and I’m hoping to work with her again very soon. Special thanks to the folks across the street at Threat Management Center, for providing me with power for my lights.

Anyway, click on one of the above images, or here, to see more photos. If you want to see even more photos from the shoot after that (27 total!), check out this Flickr set.

In other news, I snuck some other new work on the site recently… Some new photography and some new illustrations. Let’s stay on the photography topic for now.

A friend of mine posed for some pin-up photography a few months back, and she approved of me posting a couple of our more interesting & abstract shots, on the condition that she remain anonymous. Click here, or above, to check out both of them. Perhaps you’ll see more from the shoot further on, if she gives of the OK, but for now, enjoy these steamy (literally in this case) photos. (sort of nsfw)

I also did some illustration. We’ll stay on the topic of nsfw for this one, although it is also quite tasteful…

Recently Electric Ant posted a collaboration between a good bunch of indie comics artists, many of which are buddies of mine, in honor of the recently departed Jean Giraud, aka Moebius. I loved his art, growing up, and was saddened to hear of his passing. For this tribute, we all picked an image from a collector’s card set that Moebius made, and did a “cover” of the image. Click above, or here, to see my interpretation of “Loona”. Also, be sure to check out the post on Electric Ant, to see a ton of AMAZING art by other Moebius-lovers!

One last piece to update here… A collage / illustration that I made out of shipping labels:

Just something fun I whipped up in 20 min in my journal. Click above, or here to see the whole image (it’s not NSFW, but I sort of like this sneak preview format!)

Anyway, I hope you cats and kittens enjoy the new stuff! I’ve been absolutely swamped lately with two big freelance book design / typersetting gigs this year so far, so it’s cut down my workflow on other things, but hopefully I’ll post some more fun stuff here again soon, before the next century!

I’ve been a busy boy since moving back to Michigan. Three big freelance gigs at the same time. Two publishing projects, which I’ll go into more detail about later, and a series of coloring pages and craft/project photography for Education.com. You can see the coloring pages (seriously, how fun is this freelance gig!) on the Illustration page. Click above, or here to see the series I did for the upcoming Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. The series featured IM Pei, Michelle Kwan, Ichiro Suzuki, Kristi Yamaguchi, Larry Shinoda, Apollo Anton Ohno, Maya Lin,Duke Kahanamoku, Jeremy Lin, and Dan Inouye.

Also, go look at the coloring page I did of my cat!

I also posted a few shots I look of Katie while I was visiting LA in December. Check them out here! Here’s one of them:

More stuff coming soon… I’ve been back in MI for a couple months, and have been alternating between crazy busy and crazy chillaxing. I have an exciting and avant-garde shoot scheduled for this coming Sunday, and I hope to be having a mini-renaissance of art-making this spring and summer!

Hello everybody out there. As I mentioned earlier, I have another Zivity pin-up shoot that I had shot, and it is now online!

No relation to the song by Dylan (just borrowing a good title!), this set features the beautiful Chelsea Christian. I met her via Raven, and it was a pleasure to shoot with this awesome Floridian. I only regret that we didn’t get a chance to play some video games while she was in town, as she is a fellow avid gamer! Anyway, this involved about 100 yards of dark blue and light blue ribbon, which I thought matched her hair quite well. I’ve posted some of the pics here on the site (or click the preview pic above), but if you want to see the rest (and hopefully vote for them!), you can check out the full gallery on Zivity. Again, this set is NSFW! (lots of nudity)

In other news, it’s looking like life is bringing me back to Southeast Michigan again very soon (January 2012). Maybe it’s not the best idea to mention this on my professional-art-gallery-check-this-shit-out-site, but this recession has been pretty tough on me (as it has on most people). My artistic output has dropped dramatically the last couple years (even the pics you see above, I shot six months ago, and only just editing recently).  I think it’s time to go back to Michigan to regroup, save money, keep doing freelance work, and just relax a little. I think this will open up my life better to being able to make a LOT more art… photography, illustration, design, music, comics, illustrated-photography, etc. I know from experience that I can’t make good art when I’m always stressed and under the gun. It’s one thing to have an intense, stressful art deadline. That motivates me. But the constant stress of worrying about covering my expensive bay-area rent, going into debt, and living in a crappy part of said bay area, has been making it hard to focus on creative projects and has diminished my creative spark. I know it’s living within me, dormant, and it’s come out to say hi during times of less stress. I think it’s time to clear my mind, lets the spark flourish, and make my best work ever. Sure, I’ll be back in a comparatively boring part of the country for a while, but I’m a firm believer that one’s home needs to be a sanctuary, and I could use that a bit while I “recharge my batteries”. I hope this doesn’t make me seem unprofessional, but no one is resilient forever, and while some artists thrive on living a tortured existence, I am the opposite.

I probably won’t be posting much on here for a little bit, until I get resettled (or recharged here in the bay, if a job comes together in time). Stay tuned however, and enjoy your holidays, whatever kind you celebrate!

Okay, in less naked news, I added a bunch of… well, odds & ends to the site, mostly to the Design page, but one to Illustration as well. Mostly stuff from the past year that I for some reason forgot to upload, but also a few brand new things.

“Sugar Brain 3″ LP packaging
The full layout design for my newest album. All collage goodness with rainbows, tigers, and unsettling people with glowing eyes. What more could you want? Don’t forget, you can download the album for free if you so desire!

“Cradle 2 the Grave” mix-CD packaging
A morbidly-titled mix  that I passed out at my birthday party earlier this year.

“3 for Marie” mix-CD packaging
The packaging design for a three-disc mix I made for one of my best buddies, Marie.

“Testarossa” mix-CD packaging
An epic five-disc mix-CD set I made for my last girlfriend when we were still dating. Might be strange of me to post it here, but I was always proud of that cover design.

“Wedding Road Trip” page headers
Headers I made for a blog following two young newlyweds on a cross country marriagepalooza.

Honey Badger: A Thug in His Own Right
A t-shirt design I made that Ryan and I were going to put out, inspired by motorcycle club jackets and vicious mammals, but then the Honey Badger meme got stale and we lost interest. Pretty funny image though, so check it out.
In other news, I made a bunch of subtle tweaks all over the site. Now all the copyright dates are correct. Well, let’s rephrase that. I get lazy about going through the whole site each year and changing all the dates, and I’m not enough of a coding wizard to install a site-wide auto-updating line of date code. Thus, now it just says “© Evan Hayden” instead of  “© YEAR Evan Hayden”. It’s my copyrighted work, regardless of the year anyway. I can see you falling asleep from here, so I’ll get onto the other site tweaks… I also redid some of the thumbnails on the Design page to better reflect their content, mostly notably in the album packaging (square thumbnails now to give a quick preview of the whole album cover), and in the logos (thin borders on the thumbnail boxes now to make everything more cohesive). The other change I made was in taking most of the text on the screen and bumping it up a size. In my opinion, this isn’t as pretty as delicate small text on the page, but it’s more readable in general, and I was getting tired of leaning so close to my monitor to read my own dang site! (and others mentioned to me that the old font was too small as well). So in general these tweaks mean better accessibility for others, and less updating headaches for me!

Hey all you cats and kittens. I’ve just uploaded a new set to the People Photography page, and you’ll notice right away that it’s pretty different than my usual work. Namely, it’s my first serious venture into pinup / nudie photography, and also my first set to be published on Zivity. It’s called “Sherbet Time” and features Raven Le Faye – one of my favorite models to work with, as you can tell from how much she’s been on my site lately! click the above image (or here) to see about 40% of the set. The rest of the set is on Zivity, here. Note that you have to be a Zivity member to see that last link. I should also mention if you can’t tell yet, this photo set is pretty NSFW, so if you’re at work, underage, or a prude, don’t look! Otherwise, enjoy!

Not along ago, I shot another set intended for Zivity with a beautiful Florida model I met through Raven. I’ll be posting that soon as well, both here and on Zivity. Also stay tuned for more pinup work in general from me, as it’s a pretty fun and potentially more lucrative direction I’ll be continuing. If that’s not your bag, never fear, I’m still doing a ton of other kinds of stuff!

Side note, you’ll notice that I reorganized the People Photography page to better separate my fashion, product, and pinup work .It’s also set up so it will pretty hard for you to accidentally view the naked pics if you don’t want to (unless you’re not paying enough attention, of course). Anyway, I also uploaded a ton of other things to other parts of the site and did general site tweaks a bit. More on that in my next blog post, coming up in 3… 2… 1…

Hey kids. Long time no type. Life has been keeping me busy lately, the day job and the freelance work both. Anyway, I uploaded a bunch of semi-recent photoshoots to the People Photography gallery:

A chemistry-themed pinup that I shot with Beau.  –>  find those pics HERE

A small sampling of the many product shots I’ve done over the past year for my buddy SEIBEI’s clothing label.  –>  find those pics  HERE

…and speaking of product shots, a sample of the clothing shots I did for Babushka Designs.  –>  find those pics  HERE

In other news, I’m FINALLY back to making music again, after, errr, a six year hiatus. I’m in the middle of rebuilding the Macro site right now, but in the meantime, click here or the image below to go to the download page for my new all NOISE EP. If you’re not a very adventurous listener, stay tuned, my next proper album of real “music” will be coming along soonish.

YAYY!!

In the midst of an epic battle, twin psychic school girls deal a decisive blow upon a towering giant robot. Pretty much my magnum opus thus far… It’s the third in my giant robot series, but there’s more to it than just that. From my middle school days until the early days of college, I was a huge anime nerd. I also read a ton of manga. These two mediums have had a profound effect on my art style, techniques, and favorite themes to this day. Though I am still being a big manga fan, I don’t watch much anime anymore. I got sort of burned-out, and didn’t feel like I was seeing enough variety in the modern-day anime (with the exceptions of auteurs such as Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, and Katsuhiro Otomo).

Despite the disaffection with modern anime, I still have a strong love of the stuff I grew up on, tracing back to being a 4 year old and watching Robotech with my older brother. That had a profound effect on me. In this piece, I pay tribute to that, as well as Mai the Psychic Girl, Gundam, Domu, Project A-Ko, Cutey Honey, and other bits and bobs of Japanese pop culture that I grew up with, as well as a little dose of Transformers. Basically as you can see, giant robots and psychic battles are two of my favorite subject matters!

I shot this (the girls and part of the background at least) with one of my favorite models, Raven Le Faye, in Berkeley over a year ago. The robot is made up of over 20 different cars that I shot in Michigan and California. I shot the distant background in Los Angeles. Lots of stuff going on in this… I’m very pleased to finally be releasing it into the world after so long.

On a semi-sad note, this is going to be my last “super epic”, super detailed piece for a while.. It took me too long to make (over 60 hours) as I work much slower in Wacom than anything analog. Most of my illustrated-photography pieces take me between 15 and 30 hrs, which is also a long time, but this one was ridiculous. Just the robot on it’s own would have normally been a piece on its own, but I decided to take this piece farther. That said, I really need to buy a Wacom Cintiq, for a more 1:1 drawing experience – as opposed to the disconnect one gets from drawing on the desk and looking at the screen. I think this would speed up my workflow considerably. Problem is, I’m broke, so until I can scrape together the extra cash, I’m going to have to stick with more simple pieces for a little bit, otherwise I’ll only get one new piece done every several months, which is not enough for me. Good to pause this era (for now at least), with a BANG! (literally, in this case, hence the explosion)

I decided since this new work is particularly special to me that I’d throw in a little bonus. Click the above image, or here, to see a detailed “Making of” / behind-the-scenes for this work.

Special thanks to Raven for modeling for this. You’ll see her in a couple other works on the site, and you will be seeing her in more work soon! For example, another illustrated photography piece, a much more simple one that I’ll be getting to soon… Also, she modeled for a pin-up / alt / fetish / nudie set that I’ll be submitting to Zivity soon. That’s very new territory for me, and was a fun experience. Once I get that posted, I’ll direct you there (all of you over 18 yrs old, at least!). Also, I’ll be posting an EGL shoot I did with her soon (and if you didn’t see these really cute pics from a year ago, you should!) Thanks also go out to Ryan Sands, David Murray, and Dawon Kim for giving me feedback at various stages along the way of the creation of this beast! Also thanks to Lady Gaga, Skrillex, Wham!, Dschingis Khan, Arabesque, and the TalkRadar and Gamespy Debriefing podcasts for supplying background sounds for the big push this past week.

In other news, I have more stuff to post soon. Other stuff that I’ve been working on over the past few months, but haven’t had the time to organize into gallery pages yet. A shoot with Beau (some of which is edited and done, some note)… Also the ongoing product photography work I’ve been doing for my buddy Seibei / David Murray, and also product photography I did for Babushka Designs / Tatiana Jimenez. Both of those coming soon (or you could just look at those links and buy some awesome stuff!) You’ll also notice that I upped the font size on the last stuff I uploaded. I’ll be doing this throughout the site soon, I’m just super lazy right now. the old text looked great on lower-resolution screens, but I’m finding it hard to read on my 22″ Samsung, and I’m guessing you might too! Okay, gotta get a little sleep now! It’s after 7am and I’ve been in a creative trance!

Hey dudes and dudettes.. Yes, it has been a long time since my last post. This summer was pretty crazy busy, and fall got busier. Since my last post, I moved to Los Angeles in early October. I’m here possibly temporarily, hopefully long term. It just depends on how my job hunt turns out. I’ve also been applying for things up in the Bay Area, so I could end up back there. Or I could end up back in Michigan again if I don’t get something stable set up here by the time I run out of money. Maybe I shouldn’t be so forthcoming about that stuff on my art blog – perhaps it makes me look unprofessional – but hey, just gotta be honest. It’s a rough economy out there for everyone, and a time when there are a lot less opportunities for us creative professionals. Let’s just say that for every graphic design or photography job I’ve applied to, I’ve applied to two retail jobs. Hey, gotta do what you gotta do. I”m just hoping to get something stable enough out here to stay, and keep working towards… THE PRIZE.

Anyway, despite not getting much real art done this last four months, I have been making stuff. The problem is that a lot of it is freelance graphic design for secret projects, or for internal corporate documents & presentations. Not as exciting as making bit colorful illustrated-photo pieces, or comics, or fashion photography, but it does pay the bills when those fun things are hard to rely on in an economic pinch. Anyway, I should be able to show some of that work sooner or later…

I did actually make quite a bit of changes to the site, both in flow and mechanics. A lot of it you won’t really see, but trust me, it helps. I guess you could say it’s evanhaydenart.com, ver 2.1. Since coding is not second nature to me, I had some big bugs that had been waiting to be squashed since the site overhaul. The last bit of them involved problems with the CSS involved in my links. So if you saw visited links showing up as white on white (not very user friendly), that’s why. Usually it’s as simple as changing a style property, but this was a unusually complex problem, under the surface. I wanted to extend my gratitude to my buddy Vivian Hui – an amazing graphic designer and web designer – for helping me fix this problem!

Other changes around the site include:

• New background on all pages but the intro page. I love the way the colorful pink & purple splash background looks on the intro page, but on the regular gallery pages, I thought things were looking a bit too busy, and that the background distracted from the content. The new background is darker, which should help the content stand out more, and still has that eye-trickery that i like… If you stare at it too long, it starts to get a bit of a moiré pattern to it…  I apologize for an headaches it may induce!
• Shuffled around some of the Illustrated-Photography and People Photography pieces. Deleted some of the old stuff, and took some of the old or less-potent stuff and moved it into archive pages. Basically these archive pages have work that I’m still fond of in a way, and want you to be able to see if you so desire, but don’t have the same punch as the newer and/or better work that I wish to showcase. If you want to see the archives, they are linked on the bottom of their respective galleries.
• Simplified code throughout the site. Many of the pages should load faster and cleaner now. There was a lot of redundant/junk code (remember, I’m not a master programmer!) that Vivian pointed out, and I tried to strip away a bunch of it. Also, since the new background is about 10% the file size of the old one, that should load faster as well.
• Rearranged the links page a bit for better visual parsing.
• Took the links to all my different automotive Flickr sets out of the Automotive Photography page. You can still access them, but I realized that I didn’t need them all listed there. Took up a lot of space, and was too much to maintain every time I made a new Flickr set (which I do often). So now just click to check out the collection, and go from there…

As for things still on my checklist, I realize it’s been two years since the new site launched, and I still don’t have a proper shop set up for prints. I’ll get to that soon, hopefully, if my life stabilizes anytime in the near future. What originally held me back was when my hard drive died in ‘08, and I lost the originals of a lot of my work. I had to redraw a lot of them to sell any prints, and I now feel that those redrawn ones, in addition to my new work since, has given me a good base to work from, when I do get the store set up. In the meantime, just email me (skeletron  AT  gmail  DOT com) if you wanna buy some thangz. Also, I know that the music page is pretty barren. I’m still on a music hiatus. I want to get back into it soon, but again, life has been too hectic, busy, and unstable this last couple years.

In other, more exciting news, see that pretty face up there? The one with a few outlines, but still none of the nose? That is a very tiny segment of my next illustrated-photo piece. It’s going to be a very epic one. I’m about 4 hours into it, and I estimate it’ll take another 40 to finish. It will contain a lot of different themes that I enjoy, all jammed into one big piece. As for those themes, I’ll keep them secret for now… I will just say that it’s my first illustrated-photo to contain an explosion! Also, the theme could be referred to as “a love letter to my 13-year-old self”. I’ll keep that vague for now. It’ll all make sense when it’s done. Anyway, adieu for now. Hopefully less than four months will have elapsed by the next time I write.

I just finished the second in my series of illustrated-photography pieces based on my dreams, and it is called “Cinder”.  Click above or here to see it! (NSFW)

Catching up, part 2…

In late May, shortly after arriving back in Michigan, I took part in a group photo shoot at Collingwood Arts Center in Toledo, OH.  I’ve just uploaded photos from my four favorite shoots of the day… Sitha Lam, my good pal Beau, Latacha, and Kayleigh Marie Studer.