Sunday, December 07, 2008

Bzzzzzzzzzzz !



A little while ago I posted about how much skill R.E.Load as a whole has when it comes to custom graphics and applique. At the time I was missing proper photos from our newest graphics team member, Brie. Although she has been doing this for far less time that Carrie, Gerik, Ellie, Ingrid, or myself, she has been progressing at a very steady rate, and - as is the case with all of our best stitchers - has been developing styles and techniques of her own.

Brie made the above bag as a piece for the Compound Warehaus' November opening, which had a "Nightmare on Elm Street" theme.



Not having seen the flap work beforehand, I was pretty surprised to see the level of color layering and attention to detail on the bag. Not because I didnt expect great work from her; it's just that the artwork represented here is something that we normally dont have that many opportunities to do, since if this had been an actual customer order, the graphics charge would turn most people away. So, most of the time something that might have started with an idea like this would have been filtered down, with several layers of color eliminated, and a lot of detail simplified, in an effort to get the graphic down into a customer price range. But since this was for an art show, Brie had time to go as far as she wanted with the design.



I think one of the most impressive things here is that you really get the feeling of the "hair" on the body of the bee; it LOOKS like fuzz. Although it is a bit hard to translate through a computer screen, the body - as well as the honeycomb - are livened by appropriate texture, which is a style that is very difficult to pull off. You can see how many indivudually-colored sections are in just this part of the bag alone. This takes an extraordinary amount of planning and focus. And I think it speaks very well of the overall design that the graphic, color selection, and technique employed to create the image are all equally compelling.

Check out work from Brie, Carrie, Chika, Ellie, Gerik, Ingrid, Jean, and Ro on our flickr page!

1 comments:

Mr. Pete said...

whoa, i saw that bag at the show. i was totally blown away, it is NICE indeed. from 4 feet away it looked wet and sticky and disgusting, which seemed like a pretty sweet feat when working with sturdy fabric. really awesome job.