Shirt Design: Concepts (Patreon)

Jumping right in this week with a new project! A pretty big removal from what I normally do but something I have been working on for a long while and am excited to finally start posting about.It has been years and years and years since I last did a t-shirt design for myself. If anyone remembers the short run of the old 'Yeen Beans' design that was the first and last shirt I made. I have very little control over the blanks, inks, and customization and really had no idea what I was doing when I got it made. This time I am working with a local screen printer so everything is much more hands on.

I started drawing the design for this shirt around the end of 2025. My original idea was to make a 'protest' shirt, for which the reasons should be pretty obvious. I went through a bunch of concepts before landing on the idea of a Mongoose and Snake caught in a fight 'to the death' though neither are making much progress. For those that don't know: the mongoose has some level of immunity to snake venom, making it a fairly resilient foe.

The symbolism I was going for shifted from being a protest to being about the 'cycle of violence' and the perpetual pain it can cause. I wanted there to be a floral element as well, so the visual of flowers growing from their scars felt like a natural progression. Not everything about this shirt is symbolic, honestly some of it is just stuff I find fun to draw. I like stretching my art chops once in a while though. I wasn't going 'furry' with this exactly, but a design a lot of different people could maybe relate to. If not, well, I just think it's neat!---This will be posted a little different than I usually do WIPs. Instead of Sketch -> Flats -> Final I will be posting a bunch over the next few days with short little write ups. Hopefully the process will be fun to follow as I get this thing ready for pre-orders! A Pre-order for the shirts is set to open on the 29th (Friday) with the shirts expected to arrive near the end of June. More info will be available when I get that up and revealed throughout the week.