Within recent years I've fallen out of illustration, pretty much completely. It's a sad aspect of my life, one that, confessionally, can be attributed to a mixture of built up anxiety and laziness... but mostly laziness. Drawing used to be one of my favorite things to do; throughout my years in high school I spent much of my time drawing, either at home or in class, doodling and sketching out ideas, either in my sketchbook or on my classwork and notes. While that may not seem like the most appropriate use of my time for me it was a healthy hobby, one that I have fallen out of and unhealthily began dwelling on daily but never actually attending to.
Instead, music, or rather that of the avant-garde and experimental persuasion, that of noise has become the focus of much of my time. Along with my friend, Brian Sopher and more recently, Andrew Lake we created music under the name Hintergrund, a project I have documented here in a number of posts which I have created artwork and designed the packaging for.
Realizing my love for music and visual art, namely illustrative, I noticed that the two go perfectly together because what is music without the accompany of a visual element, an aesthetic, something visually tangible? Getting to the point, I approached Heccra, a one-man experimental post-hardcore project in which I have written reviews for and more recently conducted an interview with over at inb4track, the music blog I write for. I offered that I draw a design up for t-shirts, the result being the above image.
To put everything into context without too much unimportant inside speak, Heccra's sound is distinctive in that the vocals sometimes feature this pitch-shift which make them sound, like that of a chipmunk. Its a strange but intriguing production choice, one that I feel embodies the sound of the project quite well and as such, I thought I would touch on that in my illustration which is that of a cartoonish chipmunk looking rad in a cali-flip style hat, the name "Heccra" embroidered on the bottom of the bill. I think it turned out pretty dece.
