Type: Photo embroidery
Technique: Ercigoj stitch
Year: 2013
Edition: Limited
Size: Medium
Dimension: 101 x 70 cm | 39.8 x 27.6 in
Number of stitches: over 1.9 mio
Thread length: over 23 km | over 14.3 mi
Thread colours: 125
Development: over 500 person hours
Price: not for sale
About the artwork
Together with the Playboy magazine, we sent Aleš and Natalia Osolnik to India, where they shot a series of photographs for an illustrated article. The photo Goddess of Bollywood was recreated in our Ercigoj stitch technique. The photo embroidery is displayed at the Playboy Mansion of the famous founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner.
About the artist
Aleš Bravničar is a prominent Slovenian fashion, erotic and documentary photographer. Bravničar is a part of the famous Shoot the Centerfold photography workshop, and is the official photographer for the Slovenian edition of Playboy magazine.
Features
Innovation of layering
We layer multiple colours of threads and so create rich embroidery and colour texture that is impossible to create with classic one-layer embroidery technique. By layering, we develop colour transitions and shadowing, by which we create multiple-colour surfaces, similar to pointillism painting.
Smooth transitions and shading
By intertwining threads of endless colours and creating colour transitions, we can shape soft shadows, make one surface transition into another and mix colours into an endless multitude of hues. This way, we can also recreate motives from photographs and sophisticated art paintings which wouldn’t be possible with classic embroidery technique, using vector surfaces.
Sophisticated colour calibration
Usually in embroidery, 10 or 20, maybe 30 colours of threads are used. We use around 1,000 colour hues and if a colour still doesn’t match the desired one, we create it by layering and colour transitions. We have digitally scanned colours of all threads by using a spectrograph, so we can colour match any colour from an original material or from CMYK, RGB or Pantone colour schemes.