Friday, May 24, 2013

Fruits, drupes, and berries

This week's contest theme was Greek Mythology. I really enjoyed studying that in school (plus Egyptian and Norse mythology). A number of contenders came to mind - Athena (emerging from Zeus' head, or with her owl - though owls are drastically over-represented on fabrics already), Persephone, the whole pantheon of gods, the twelve labors of Hercules?

I ended up gravitating towards a few symbolic representations of myths. First of all, olives, since they so omnipresent in the culture, plus were supposedly introduced by Athena. Then, golden apples, which figure into the myth of Atlanta as well as the whole business with Troy. And finally, pomegranate seeds for Persephone. I was originally going to try to make all of the fruits look shiny and 3D with shading, but I ended up liking the way they looked as flat graphic shapes. I had a really hard time getting the pomegranate seeds look evenly spread - there kept being accidental clusters and bare patches. I think I managed to get the overall distribution pretty satisfying.

Golden apples, pomegranate seeds, and olives

This came in 71 out of 166 with 130 votes. My favorite entry was Persephone's Garden, which came in second and reminded me very much of this poem. I also absolutely loved these extremely cute Pegasi, and want very much to have had a shirt made of this when I was six. I also liked this sweet unicorn design, which if the previous is for a six-year-old, then this one is more for an eleven-year-old. The Greek warrior design that won was totally amazing, but then everything that designer (who goes by Spellstone) does is amazing.

No comments: