If artist Evan Hayden ever wants to be your friend, think twice. Sure, his robot art is jarring and beautiful, and he lives in a world of dolls gone wrong. But he also covers his friends with metallic body paint.
Oh, and a couple of these images may be a tad NSFW (mostly just images #14 and #16).
We caught up with Hayden at an art show on Friday, and we were blown away by his images of weird robots, dolls, transformers gone awry and strange mutations. We were even more amazed when he told us that his friends served as the model for all of these pictures (except when he models himself.) We asked Hayden more about his work, and here's what he told us:
Ever since I was a kid, I've loved comics. Starting around 2000, I began experimenting with combining the visual language of comic books with my other artistic passion - photography. In college, I made these illustrated-photography pieces in a fully analog way, by shooting in film, making C-prints, and drawing directly on them with marker. After graduating, I couldn't afford to do film more anymore, and in '05 I bought my Wacom tablet. Ever since then, I shoot digitally, composite on the computer, and hand-draw everything with the Wacom. Even though hand-drawing it digitally takes me a lot longer than ink, I do that rather than automatic vectorizing because I want to maintain the human touch to my art.
I love exploring themes of body-horror, biomechanical transformations, insane robots, and anything vividly colorful. Thankfully for my artwork, I have some very helpful friends who don't seem to mind being painted with crazy metallic body paints, or loaded down with gadgets!
Some of my influences are Tadanori Yokoo, Jasper Goodall, and Hajime Sorayama, as well as a life full of comics, video games, robot toys, and my trips to Japan.
See more of his awesome work at the link. [Evan Hayden Art]