First Night Design | Happy Accidents or Tennyson’s Manor

First Night Design

A couple of mornings ago I woke up with a scene in my mind’s eye and knew it was something I wanted to create.  I saw desert, night sky and camels.  I set to work last night.

Kerstin Frank & The Graphics Fairy

But I did not discover Kerstin‘s textures above till this morning and was convinced I could do something with two I already had.

So what happened, Sarah?

A happy accident. I put together two textures from Kerstin Frank that I had previously downloaded and experimented with blending.  It needed more work to create even half the background I had envisaged but I decided to add the camel from The Graphics Fairy and take it from there.  Yet I could not find the camel.  I knew it was on my computer but it was already past midnight and I didn’t have the energy to search properly nor…

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First Night Design | The Proposal

The Proposal © First Night Design

And so the handwritten document from The Cry of the Peacock and the First Night History header comes into play again! This I combined with a lovely, messy texture of orangey-yellow that I created some time ago. Needless to say, it took a while before the perfect image to overlay became apparent. I had time on my hands with an internet connection playing fast and loose so what better way to spend the hours? No, that animal wouldn’t do. Oh, no, those flowers look appalling. The lady with the parasol? I don’t think so.

It was only when I discovered a free image in my folder from Vintage Art Download, run by the wonderfully talented Mindy Sommers, that this piece was made whole. The image was the famous painting from 1906 by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Ask Me No More, which takes its title from the poem by Tennyson. You know me! I can’t help tinkering, even with the Masters.

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Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Happy Accidents or Tennyson’s Manor

A couple of mornings ago I woke up with a scene in my mind’s eye and knew it was something I wanted to create.  I saw desert, night sky and camels.  I set to work last night.

Kerstin Frank & The Graphics Fairy

But I did not discover Kerstin‘s textures above till this morning and was convinced I could do something with two I already had.

So what happened, Sarah?

A happy accident. I put together two textures from Kerstin Frank that I had previously downloaded and experimented with blending.  It needed more work to create even half the background I had envisaged but I decided to add the camel from The Graphics Fairy and take it from there.  Yet I could not find the camel.  I knew it was on my computer but it was already past midnight and I didn’t have the energy to search properly nor visit The Graphics Fairy to download it again.

What happened next, Sarah?

During the search for the camel, I came across a charming vintage postcard depicting the home of Alfred Lord Tennyson – Aldworth House in Haslemere, Surrey. Let’s try that, I thought, and save it for another artwork.

Aldworth House

The postcard has a facsimile of Tennyson’s signature on the right and the first stanza of In Memoriam on the left:

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

No sooner had I plonked the postcard on top of the Frank textures than I knew the piece was transformed.  and once I had made certain changes and experimented with different Photoshop states, it became clear that camels under the night sky would have to wait.

Tennyson’s Manor @ First Night Design

So there you have it.

Take care and keep laughing!