First Night Design | Maya Angelou — I Rise

To celebrate what would have been Maya Angelou’s 90th birthday, here is the great lady herself with ‘I Rise’. She is never less than inspiring. I’ve posted this video before but it never fails to touch my soul.

Take care and keep laughing!

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First Night Design | New! The Easter Hat Box #VintageArt

The Easter Hat Box Greeting Card © Sarah Vernon at Redbubble

This is an original vintage colour lithograph by Frank A. Nankwell used for a Puck periodical cover in 1899 (April 5) from The Library of Congress and copyrighted by Keppler & Schwarzman. Easter has never looked so attractive!

Please note that Zazzle is taking a long time for this design to show in search results.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America [14 fulfilment centres in 5 countries]

Take care and keep laughing!

Keep Calm and Sham Rock! St Patrick’s Day – Repost

First Night Design

Keep Calm and Sham Rock! by FirstNightDesign

I’m finally building up my collection of St Patrick’s Day designs.  First up is this humorous take on the ‘Keep Calm’ Ministry of Information posters from WWI, which is also available with a white background.

Keep Calm and Sham Rock! Greeting Cards by FirstNightDesign

Below are a couple of my earlier designs.

Faces of Saint Patrick Greeting Cards by FirstNightDesign

Harp of Erin Greeting Card by FirstNightDesign

Shamrock Fields Post Cards by FirstNightDesign

Take care and keep laughing!

Related articles

• St. Patrick’s Day Crafts: Easy Hand Towels {Dollar Store Style!} (alittleclaireification.com)
• Capital gears up for biggest ever St Patrick’s celebration (independent.ie)

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First Night Design | For My Mother | Mothering Sunday

Mother’s Day in the UK is this Sunday, while tomorrow is International Women’s Day. This is a post I wrote in 2014 which some of you have seen before.

First Night Design

Benedicta Leigh 1922—2000 [photo: David Sim] Born Benedicta Hoskyns in 1922, my mother spent a large part of her childhood on the island of Malta where her father was serving in the Rifle Brigade.

She later spent a year drawing from life at Salisbury School of Art. During World War II, she nursed with the Red Cross in Auxiliary Hospitals and Convalescent Homes throughout the country, also finding time to write, produce and play in several revues for her patients.

The war over, she trained for the stage at RADA where she received commendations from Sybil Thorndike and Laurence Irving and won the George Arliss prize as well as sharing the Dialect prize with Cyril Shaps.

Her subsequent career included repertory at Windsor, Bromley, Sheffield, Coventry and Nottingham, No Other Verdict at the Duchess Theatre in the West End (“stealing all the notices as the maid” she would tell me…

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First Night Design | St Patrick’s Day Feast #Napkins #Placemats #Sold!

Wearing the Green on St Patrick’s Day Cloth Napkins

Wearing the Green on St Patrick’s Day Placemats

 

Sold!

Take care and keep laughing!

Exhibition Review: Winnie the Pooh: Exploring a Classic (V&A) | Enough of this Tomfoolery!

Long before there was Paddington Bear, Shaun the Sheep and Peppa Pig, there was Winnie the Pooh. For over 90 years, the bear with very little brain and his friends Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Tigger, Kanga, Roo and Christopher Robin have entertained and enchanted both…

via Exhibition Review: Winnie the Pooh: Exploring a Classic (V&A) | Enough of this Tomfoolery!

First Night Design | Goose and Frog’s Easter Journey | Repost

The original vintage image advertising Palmer’s Cologne (The Graphics Fairy) is very appealing, but I was compelled to alter it. Of course.

I created a textured background by blending several flower photographs and one ready-made texture from  2 Lil’ Owls.

The egg is taken from a photograph at the…

via First Night Design | Goose and Frog’s Easter Journey | First Night Design

First Night Design | #Valentine Blush #Screenwriting

Valentine Blush © First Night Design/Sarah Vernon

I can’t bear it when I have nothing of my own to post because while I love finding other work on art, books, writing or photography to introduce you to, there’s always those niggling thoughts that run: “But you need to be promoting your own work to earn money!” or “Why aren’t you going back to writing your memoirs?” But it’s got to stop, as I’m sure you’ll tell me. Living is more important when push comes to ultimate shove and you’re not the twenty-eight-year-old you feel.

Quentin Crisp NYC 1992 Ross Bennett Lewis

Valentine Blush is new and I had every intention of uploading it to the galleries in time to catch the Valentine market. It didn’t happen and so it’s still not available to buy. I don’t care because I’ve become more embedded in the local community by making some new friends including writer Barbara Jane Mackie whose screenwriter father, Philip Mackie, adapted short stories by Saki in 1962 with a cast that just happened to include my father, Richard Vernon. Some of you might remember Mackie’s later work as he was responsible for the incomparable adaptation of The Naked Civil Servant [1975] with a never-to-be-forgotten performance by the late John Hurt as Quentin Crisp.

Take care and keep laughing!

Reflections, Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites at the National Gallery

Just add pictures

Whilst it is the major, blockbuster exhibitions like the current Charles I, King and Collector at the Royal Academy which receive most of the public’s attention, there remains an important role for smaller, focused exhibitions like Reflections, now showing at the National Gallery.

Reflections focuses on the influence of one painting, the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck. Painted in 1434, the picture was acquired by the National Gallery in 1842. It was the first example in the gallery’s collection of early C15 low country painting. And as such it represented a marked contrast from the Southern European Renaissance and Mannerist painting which dominated the collection and were typically seen as the high point of the art of painting.

The Arnolfini Portrait is a very sophisticated painting, highly naturalistic in execution, And with a quality of the detailing, such as the two figures greeting the pair who can only be…

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LETTER TO MY SON

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Beauty Bellezza Beauté

Letter To My Son

(Ilse Weber – 1903-1944).

My dear boy, three years ago today
You were sent into the world alone.
I still see you, at the station in Prague,
how you cry from the compartment, and hesitate.
You lean your brown head against me
and how you beg; let me stay with you!
That we let you go, seemed hard for you —
You were just eight, and small and delicate.
And as we left for home without you,
I felt, my heart would explode
and nevertheless I am happy that you’re not here.
The stranger who is taking you in
will surely go to Heaven.
I bless her with every breath I take —
Your love for her will not be enough.
It has become so murky around us here,
Everything has been taken away from us.
House, home, not even a corner of it left,
Not…

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Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War | Imperial War Museums

I have been in hospital for two weeks, hence the gap in transmission.

Discover the artworks and story of Britain’s original rebel artist in the largest UK retrospective of Wyndham Lewis’ work to date. Marking the 60th anniversary of his death and the centenary of his commission as an official war artist in 1917, Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War comprises of more than 160 artworks, books, journals and pamphlets from major public and private, national and international collections.

Source: Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War | Imperial War Museums

Portrait Subjects Wanted ! – Curses and Riots

I’m looking for London subjects for an exhibition opening in October exploring the relationship people living with long-term invisible conditions (both physical and emotional) have with their…

Source: Portrait Subjects Wanted! – Curses and Riots

Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card #Sold!

Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card. Personalize any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

There were never such devoted pumpkins! Fresh pumpkins to make an exquisite pumpkin pie for your Halloween supper. Also suitable for Thanksgiving.

Source: Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card (866786)

Take care and keep laughing!

Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card #Sold!

Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card. Personalize any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

The shadows of flying turkeys trying, perhaps, not to be caught and end up on the Thanksgiving table!

Source: Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card (868757)

Take care and keep laughing!

Art From The Holocaust – artinmanyforms

Karl Bodek and Kurt Conrad Löw, One Spring (1941)

A new exhibition in Berlin explores the grim realities of life for Jews in Nazi camps and ghettos. A historic new exhibit, Art from the Holocaust, opened in the rear wing of the German Historical …

Source: Art From The Holocaust – artinmanyforms