First Night Design | Harbour Parasols #Art #New

You have no idea just how peachy it has been to create a piece of art with my new vision after spending so many months re-blogging earlier pieces and promoting those which have sold. My heart and soul are leaping with joy. Just as well in view of the unconscionable state prevailing in the UK after a general election. I am reminded of my favourite quote from erstwhile US President Jimmy Carter (and there are many to choose from) which says it all when one thinks of Prime Minister Theresa May’s parentage: the daughter of a vicar no less. “If you don’t want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying you want a country based on Christian values because you don’t.’

Harbour Parasols Framed Prints © Sarah Vernon [Redbubble]

The original is a photochrom from the Library of Congress of the entrance to the harbour at St. Malo in France taken between 1890 and 1900. I duplicated the image, ran the jpg through the Topaz Impressions Abstraction II filter, which I added as a third layer before topping with one of my yellow textures. I made use of a variety of Photoshop blends such as Darken, Lighter Colour and Screen.

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“The Green, Green Grass of Home” Scarves by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

Features / Art Universe 19 September 2015 / Photoshop / I combined a Chinese print from the Library of Congress at Flickr with the Beguiling-18 texture from 2 Lil’ Owls, and the bluewatercolor texture from Angie Makes via Design Cuts. • Also buy this artwork on scarves, apparel, stickers, and more.

Source: “The Green, Green Grass of Home” Scarves by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

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Contemplation Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Contemplation Tote Bag by Sarah Vernon. The tote bag is machine washable, available in three different sizes, and includes a black strap for easy carrying on your shoulder. All totes are available for worldwide shipping and include a money-back guarantee.

Source: Contemplation Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

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First Night Design | Behind Time #Art #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 15th September 2015

I adore clocks and watches and all things time-related, perhaps because I’m constantly trying to hold back time! I created two circular layers from the centre of the same Chinese print I used in Th…

Source: First Night Design | Behind Time #Art | First Night Design

First Night Design | Fagin’s Den #Vintage #Art

Fagin’s Den © Sarah Vernon – Buy prints, cards & home decor from FAA

This is an old book-plate by Ernest Haslehurst of a public house called The Grapes at Limehouse (once The Bunch of Grapes) that I bought from collectors Vintage Views. It would be fun to think this Taylor Walker & Co pub was the inspiration for Dickens and Fagin’s den in Oliver Twist but it certainly makes me think of the narrow cobbled streets of Victorian London where pickpockets and other nefarious persons would ply their trade. It dates from the 16th century but the frontage is Victorian.

Although the original is in good nick, it has a faded quality even though it has not actually faded, so I added a duplicate layer in Overlay to bring out the colour and detail.

Fagin’s Den Drawstring Bag © Sarah Vernon @ Redbubble

Look closely — I can see Nancy on the balcony, and isn’t that Bill Sikes with his Staffy, Bullseye, coming up the ladder? And surely that’s Fagin himself at the curtain. Could this not, in fact, be the very place from which Sikes hanged himself?

The Grapes does have a connection to Dickens, however, since he knew that area of Limehouse well and probably based The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in Our Mutual Friend on it.

From the research I’ve done, I learn that the lessees are actor Sir Ian McKellen, director Sean Mathias and Evening Standard owner, Evgeny Lebedev, the trio having bought the pub in 2011; it looks as if it’s a charming place to find some excellent beer and food. Let me know if you visit.

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First Night Design | The Sports Pavilion #Art

The Sports Pavilion © Sarah Vernon at Crated

The Sports Pavilion uses a photograph from a store called Clark Street Mercantile who have added what I assume to be their brochure photographs to that great free resource, Unsplash.

In the first instance I used Topaz Impressions’ chiaroscuro effect but I wanted something else. To this end I added 2LO Texture Artists 2 in the Multiply mode and enhanced the brightness and contrast. The image now appears to be a charmingly aged print of an old sports pavilion from, say, the 1920s or ’30s. Well, I like to think so!

The Sports Pavilion Tote Bags © Sarah Vernon at FAA

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First Night Design | Keep Calm and Then Scream #Cushions #Accessories

Keep Calm & Then Scream Pillow by FirstNightDesign

This is one of my favourite cushions because of the exhortation. I believe it’s very healthy to scream and let go of all those frustrations. Take a leaf out of Sally Bowles’ book and find a railway bridge to stand beneath so that as soon as a train comes along, you can scream your heart out without disturbing anyone — remember the scene in Cabaret with Liza Minnelli and Michael York? Mind you, I’m not sure just how much noise modern overground trains make so be careful. I can’t actually recall if this scene is in Christopher Isherwood’s book, Goodbye To Berlin, on which the musical is based so it’s time to read it again, methinks.

Keep Calm & Then Scream Bicycle Playing Cards by FirstNightDesign

Southwold Pier in the summer sunshine [Wikipedia]

When I worked in weekly rep in the delightful seaside town of Southwold in Suffolk (UK) in the early 1980s, some of us went to the beach in the middle of the night. The wind was immense and the waves frightening. Who would be able to hear us? And boy, did we scream! As we looked around us sheepishly, we saw that several upstairs windows had been wrenched upwards. We skedaddled!

Keep Calm & Then Scream Bag Tag by FirstNightDesign

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First Night Design | Clowns of the Sea #Art

Clowns of the Sea © Sarah Vernon at Crated

2 Lil’ Owls – 2LO~French Script antique papers 2-13.
Puffin – Biodiversity Library.
Flora & Fauna – Biodiversity Library.

A few tidbits from National Geographic:

1. Nicknamed ‘sea parrots‘ – and sometimes ‘clowns of the sea‘! – Atlantic puffins have black and white feathers and a large parrot-like beak. They are small seabirds measuring around 25cm in length.

2. Puffins spend most of their lives out at sea, resting on the waves when not swimming. Their range spans the eastern coast of Canada and the United States to the western coast of Europe.

3. A puffin’s beak (or bill) changes colour during the year. In winter, the beak has a dull grey colour, but in spring it blooms with an outrageous orange! It’s thought that the bright colour helps puffins assess potential mates.

4. Puffins are carnivores and live off small fish such as herring, hake and sand eels.

5. Puffins are fab flyers, flapping their wings up to 400 times a minute and speeding through the air at up to 88km an hour…

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First Night Design | Windows to the Soul #Abstract #Art

Windows to the Soul © Sarah Vernon – Buy at Crated

Texture TanEphemeraKitchenLabels via Design Cuts.
Photo from Unsplash by Ales Krivec.
Photo from Unsplash by Padurariu Alexandru.
Own scrapbook image.

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“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Windows to the Soul Pillow by FirstNightDesign at Zazzle

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“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
― Aristotle

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First Night Design | Easter Treat—20% off everything at Redbubble!

Great Easter offer from Redbubble with 20% off everything!
Use code BUNNY20.

CLICK HERE

HAPPY EASTER MONDAY!

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First Night Design | Shadow Deer #Art

Shadow Deer © Sarah Vernon Greeting Cards

I was profoundly moved recently to read about the carbon ‘imprint’ of a man who had been sitting on the stone steps outside the Sumitomo bank in Hiroshima when the bomb fell at 8.15am on 6th August 1945.

The ‘shadow’ left by his body was visible for many years until time and weather all but erased it. “Receiving the rays directly, the victim must have died on the spot from massive burns. The surface of the surrounding stone steps was turned whitish by the intense heat rays. The place where the person was sitting became dark like a shadow.” Google Cultural Institute

When the new bank was built, the steps were taken to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and an etching of the ‘shadow’ was created in memory of that fateful day when so many lives were ruined or — depending on your point of view — many more were potentially saved.

Shadow Deer © Sarah Vernon – Samsung Galaxy Cases & Skins

Whether this happenstance was in my subconscious when I decided to do something with Paul Earle’s photograph of deer in Bushy Park, Hampton (near London), I cannot say. If you like to ‘read’ things into other people’s work, you might say it’s my stand against the destruction of nature and wildlife where the planet will soon be a world of just such shadows.

My tongue is slightly in my cheek because I’m always amused by the things the critics read into the work they’re discussing and the ideas they attribute to the creator. I can just imagine the said artist or writer looking down from above and pooh-poohing the symbolism being expounded. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous — I wasn’t thinking anything of the kind!”

Shadow Deer © Sarah Vernon Throw Pillows

The deer in Earle’s original photograph are already in silhouette but putting the image in Linear Burn mode over the Ancient times 20 texture by 2 Lil’ Owls has increased the effect and given the image a rich, vibrant hue that you could say portends future atomic destruction!

Shadow Deer Flasks by FirstNightDesign

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First Night Design | The Chinese Vase #Art #StillLife

The Chinese Vase © Sarah Vernon

I’ve been nosing around the autochrome photographs on Wikimedia again and on this occasion I turned up the slightly-dull-but-full-of-possibility ‘Still Life with Ornate Chinese Vase’ by Frederick S Dellenbaugh, an American photographer. There’s no date attached to the image (it’s part of the Google Art Project) but autochromes were patented by the Lumière brothers in 1903 and marketed in 1907; it was the only colour process until superseded by colour film in the 1930s.

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh (American – Still Life with Ornate Chinese Vase

Although I haven’t added any painterly textures, the result of adding a texture from Kerstin Frank and another from 2 Lil’ Owls has made it look like a still life painting where the detail is immense, so great that you’re not sure whether it might not be a photograph. I’m thinking particularly of the Christmas Still Life by Eloise Harriet Standard that I put up for sale at Christmas.

Kerstin Frank

People often ask if my work is really ‘accidental’ but I can assure you it is. I didn’t start The Chinese Vase off with the idea of a ’painted’ still life. As ever, I experimented with various textures and modes (‘overlay’, ‘burn’ and so forth) until an effect grabbed my aesthetic eye.

2 Lil’ Owls

I would never have imagined the two textures above would have brought out the colour of the flowers and the brush strokes of the vase in the way they have nor, indeed, made the background recede to black as it has. It’s all very satisfying.

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First Night Design | Horloge Astronomique #Art

Horloge Astronomique © Sarah Vernon

It’s amazing what you can do with just one vintage theatre curtain. I’m at it again, only this time I’ve made the curtain a sepia pinky green overlaying a tremendous photograph by Didier B of the astronomical clock at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg in France from Wikimedia. Another Wikimedia photograph of arches at the Sonargaon Folk Arts and Craft Museum, Bangladesh, lies over one of my grainy blue textures.

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‘There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right — except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country.’ — Jerome K. Jerome

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First Night Design | Reflecting Egret #Art

Reflecting Egret © Sarah Vernon at Fine Art America

EGRET: ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French aigrette, from Provençal aigreta, from the Germanic base of heron.

Oh, the utter joy of finding the right texture for the right photograph and creating something entirely other. I didn’t have to go far since one of the textures I’ve used for Reflecting Egret is one I created myself. The other is from Kerstin Frank. The photograph I’ve sandwiched between the two is by Laitche and from Wikimedia. I discovered it when I was looking for a pelican for the most recent Cover Makeover.

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First Night Design | Roses of Yesteryear #Art

Roses of Yesteryear © Sarah Vernon at Redbubble

I fell in love a couple of weeks ago. The object of my affection was an autochromatic print of roses from a family garden in New South Wales dated 1909. I knew that I didn’t want to muck about with it in my usual fashion but only to clean up the dust and scratches and enhance the dusty pink with a peach overlay.

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“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”
― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

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