Hemipenis - t-shirt

Digital - 406.5x253mm - 2020

T-shirt artwork for the Japanese doom metal band Hemipenis. Based in Osaka, the vocalist Jun asked me to create a drawing for the band to accompany the release of their 2020 album ‘Into The Doze of Null’. Juns only instruction was to create the drawing while listening to the album and to express my feeling of the album. Or something to that effect. So that’s what I did. At least for some of the creating. Knowing me I probably listened to a lot of female pop as well. 

I figured given the name Hemipenis I’d draw some snakes and drawing symmetrical allows me to play with being trippy a lot more. Given how doom metal sucks in ones mind I wanted the drawing to be very psychedelic. After finishing the drawing I looked at some Hemipenis art (for whatever reasons I didn’t think to do before the drawing) and discovered most of their artwork is symmetrical snakes, an unexpected happy accident that the drawing fits into the band style.

I thought it would look cool to have a snake\dragon deity with a headdress spewing out a bunch of snakes. There wasn’t a great deal of thought put into the drawing, I didn’t reference anything, and I didn’t take it too seriously. I just played and played and played and had a really fun relaxing no pressure time creating. Was a good experience!

Jun is an absolutely lovely person, and I’m happy I was able to create this for his band. I saw the band play back in 2016 and although not my cup of tea I still thoroughly enjoyed their set.