First Night Design | Una Logia Privada #Art

Una Logia Privada © Sarah Vernon

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loggia |ˈləʊdʒə, ˈlɒ-, -dʒɪə|
noun
a gallery or room with one or more open sides, especially one that forms part of a house and has one side open to the garden.

ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Italian, ‘lodge’.

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My starting point was a photograph of the covered patio attached to one of the houses belonging to Charlotte Hunnewell Sorchan, Turtle Bay Gardens, 228 East 48 Street, New York.  In 1919, Miss Sorchan bought several dilapidated brownstone houses along East 49th and East 48th Street that dated from the 1860s, and renovated them.

Charlotte Hunnewell Sorchan house, Turtle Bay Gardens, 228 East 48 Street, New York, New York.

The photograph was taken by Frances Benjamin (1864-1952). As soon as I saw it in the Library of Congress’s Flickr stream, I imagined it could only be somewhere in Spain or Italy on a dullish day.  How wrong can you be. The only thing Mediterranean is that the intended design was Spanish. Perhaps Olga or Sally can tell us if it looks remotely Spanish in style!

I determined it should come over as Mediterranean as possible — stone-built walls washed with terracotta, a sun-kissed floor and such like — and give the impression of a 19th century oil painting. To do this in Photoshop I used two textures from 2 Lil’ Owls — 2LO Confetti 9 (Multiply mode) and 2LO Confetti 4 (Overlay mode), and gave the original photo a softness with the Smart Blur tool.

I hope you feel I have made a fair stab at what I imagined.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!