My Dad passed away suddenly on Thursday, August 23rd.

He was a private man, deep and brilliant and without a doubt meant for better things. He could have done anything, but he chose to be my Dad.

My Dad + Mom and Me

My middle name is Bernadette, given to me by my Dad, who had watched the movie “The Song of Bernadette” on TV a few days prior. When my Dad called me by my first name, Mary, he would often to it in a silly voice; Mary was for school and friends, Bernadette was for family.

My Dad, at the House on Clinton Road

Dad’s favorite poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti was “Pictures of the gone world 11“.

Up on the Roof

Up on the roof. He has said that if he could do it all over again, he would have gotten into fashion photography. He had a subscription to Vogue! It is a pity that he missed this years September issue, that was his favorite.

But he did get to photograph whales:

Whale Watching at Cape Cod

Portrait of my Dad with a Dash of Smirk

I miss my Dad. Watching The Three Stooges and Star Trek on the weekend won’t be the same without him. He’s in a better place to be sure, hopefully the TVs are bigger.

I’ve been digitizing the plates from the Ceramique Orientale image portfolio for a few days now, uploading them directly to the clip art store as they are completed and my mind is swimming with ideas!

The idea to apply a kaleidoscopic version of Tile Pattern Page No. 29 to alter the dress on this 19th century antique carte de visite was inspired by Gankutsuou, The Count of Monte Cristo.

Gankutsuou is a feast for the eyes as well as being a very well told tale, actually quite faithful to the original Dumas story in spite of a few radical changes, not the least of those being that our dear Count is blue, with pointed ears and fangs.
The characters clothing and hair is made up of patterns, and as the characters move the patterns do not. It is difficult to describe, so take a look at the trailer at Geneon’s official website for Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Photoshop is my software of choice. The pattern was transformed into repeating pattern using the free Kaleidoscope 2.1 Plugin from Mehdi.

I selected the dress in two sections (the “skirt” and the “bodice”) using the magnetic lasso tool. The tiled pattern was “pasted into” these sections. To age the dress, I chose to re-age the entire photograph using the Old Movie plugin from VanDerLee.

I’ll continue to work on my example image, perhaps keeping some of the color and tinting the photograph more. But for now…back to work on the rest of the tile patterns.

It’s amazing how vivid the original hand-coloring is on these vintage photographic prints of ancient ceramic designs.

As with much of what I digitize for the clip art shop, I am at a loss as to what to do with the originals. Should I frame them? Should I just put them back into storage? Probably the later…they’ll be safer that way, and I can always print out the reproductions and frame them.

More swirling arabesque flowers in these vintage tile designs.

You can see all of the beautiful hand-tinted images from my digitized version of a rare French portfolio here.

An assortment of plates and bowls. A page from a portfolio of Oriental Ceramic Designs. The grape plate is my favorite. Find the downloadable image here.

A leopard naps, a stag frolics, and birds look on in this assortment of antique oriental clip art designs, adapted from a portfolio of ceramic designs published in France in the early 20th century.

These wonderful designs are now being sold in our new store for digital content, digiCRAFTshop.com

A detail from a page of oriental ceramic tile designs, floral and paisley, that you can use as clip art.

Mostly in shades of blue, with touches of red and olive, these floral and paisley tile patterns are from a vintage French book of oriental ceramic designs.

A close up of a tile, from a full page of oriental tile designs that you can use as clip art. Mostly floral designs, I think they would make great image transfers onto tumbled marble or polymer clay.