Special Guest: Hayden Williams
Intro.
I love Hayden Williams’ story. If you want to know how cream rises, I guess it doesn’t get much truer than his story. From a young kid fascinated by Disneys iconic imagery to a young man creating imagery that has inspired many of todays icons. inspired them to recognise and support young talent. Inspired them to be generous. That’s the beauty of art I guess. From Rihanna to Kylie Jenner, Ariana Grande to Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell to Oprah Winfrey, his art has impressed them all. Hayden and I spoke for quite some time. During the conversation I asked him about the moment a certain illustration he put up on his twitter account, made him drop everything and charge full steam ahead at his dream.
Jessica Rabbit.
She had just started her ‘Loud‘ era. You know?
The red hair…Super striking! And I remember she had just dropped the album cover.
I love that picture of, you know, the close up of her face, her eyes are kind of closed, she’s kind of giving Jessica Rabbit vibes. And obviously, you know, Jessica Rabbit is one of my huge inspirations. So I fell in love with that. Before that I was focused more on just kind of doing my own miscellaneous models. I was drawing things and I was gaining popularity, but I wasn’t drawing ‘pop culture’ stuff that much. I wasn’t really drawing celebrities that much. And she was kind of like, I guess maybe the first celebrity.
Drawing inspiration.
It was more so just models wearing my creations. They weren’t really anyone specific. It was just my own models that I’d come up with.
This time around, I was kind of drawing inspiration from pop culture and what was happening. I guess in a kind of way, I used to do that anyway from, you know, being a kid. I would do that anyway with the Disney drawings and all that. That’s pop culture. But then at the same time it’s like, this time it was the celeb world of Hollywood and yeah, it just worked out perfectly.
Umbrella.
So I did an illustration inspired by that cover. But instead of just doing the closeup and copying that picture, I decided to extend it and do like a full look. So I took inspiration from the shot of her face, but then did an outfit inspired by the era. She called it like a ‘baby doll’ thing, but with we’ll get to that.
A blush pink top and skirt, I think my followers would remember the look, but the skirt had almost like a, it wasn’t really intentional, but it was like, it had a slight lampshade umbrella-esque looking skirt and it kind of came out.
But yeah, so it came out and then, you know, it just, it really looked great and I was proud of it. I put it out and then the notifications started! It was just, like every day it was more and more likes, more and more retweets. And I was like, okay, clearly people are really enjoying this illustration.
It kept on gaining traction and I had tagged her, but she hadn’t seen it yet. Then yeah, a few days later, I guess, for some reason she came across it. I dunno if it was maybe a fan page that retweeted it or something. The next thing I knew, she followed me! Then I was like, ‘Oh, uh-oh, what’s going on here?’ And then she Dm’d me not long after. I was shookieth at this point! And I was kind of like, what’s going on here?
What does the dm say!?
I didn’t know what to think. I just remember kind of running around a little bit, like a headless chicken because I was like, okay, this is really kind of crazy. And I’m not someone that gets starstruck, or get’s crazy, but it was just kind of a moment like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ This is before I even read the dm. I thought, okay, she ‘is’ following me now. She’s Dm’d me. What does the dm say? In the dm she was really gushing about the design. She was like, ‘Oh my God!’ Asking me where I’m from? She goes, ‘That baby doll is money!’. Like, ‘We should do something together’ and ‘It’s sick!’. And just, just going crazy about the design.
I still have the dm now.
