Impressions - January 2019 - 23

Grand Champion
Grand Champion of Embroidery
First Place: Multimedia
Inspired by the 1950s horror comic book genre, Allabout Digitizing & Design's Marcus Davis brought
gruesomeness to life with his winning design, "Tomb
of Terror #15." Struck by the shocking imagery of
classic graphic novels, Davis thought this particular
cover would be the perfect test of his talents.
"This came from a personal desire to see how
far I could push my creativity in combining different mediums mixed with embroidery," Davis says.
"I wanted to explore combinations of things with
embroidery, like appliqué, sublimation, laser etching
and painting. I discovered that I really liked the combination of embroidery and painting, and decided to
expand on this."
Davis came across several challenges while crafting the design, such as staying true to the artist's
line weight and textures, while keeping the fine-line
detail in the image's foreground through tight registration.
"The biggest challenge, however, was in coloring the piece," he says. "I started with water colors
since I wanted to keep the image soft, and water
colors have a transparency that allows them to blend
well. I was having a difficult time in controlling dye
migration into areas that needed to remain clean. I
would finish painting an area and come back to find
that my colors had continued to bleed outside the
borders. From this, I discovered Copic brand markers,
which are alcohol-based, not water-based. They dry
very quickly and blend just as well as any watercolor
paints I've tried."
Truly a hand-crafted piece due to the painting,
"Tomb of Terror" is not easily recognized as being
embroidered until closer inspection.
"Once you take some time to study it, you begin
to see that it has some true dimension and depth
due to the embroidery thread that's combined with
the painting," Davis says. "What I really love about

embellishment techniques.
All of the Impressions Awards winners are
featured in this issue, but they will continue
to be showcased throughout the year. They
will be displayed at every ISS event held
across the country this year, as well as online in the Impressions Awards and Design
Galleries. Additionally, each contest entry
will be featured online so that decorators
whose designs did not make the winners'
list will get much-deserved recognition for
hard work and excellent design execution.

We already are eagerly awaiting this year's
41st-annual competition. The official entry
form will be available on the Impressions
website, impressionsmag.com, this spring.
If you are interested in entering early, please
contact Managing Editor Dustin Shrader at
dustin.shrader@emeraldexpo.com for more
information.
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks
to all participants and judges. We're honored
to showcase the talent and creativity this
innovative industry has to offer.

working with embroidery is that it's the original form
of 3-D printing. You can truly get some high surfaces
and textures that are difficult, if not impossible, to
achieve with many other apparel-decoration methods."
Impressions Awards judge Scott Stengel described
the design as "creepy great" due to its crisp registration
for the paint and embroidery combination. Judge
Charlie Taublieb agrees.
"When judging the awards, I look at every part of
the image, from content to registration to the degree
of difficulty. Tomb of Terror fit all of those criteria,"
he says. "It's a wonderful piece."
JANUARY 2018

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Impressions - January 2019

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