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The other day I suddenly thought I ought to make something to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, remembering the Allies' victory in Europe in the Second World War. Unusually for me, the design came into my head in almost finished form, illustrating lines from the chorus of Vera Lynn's famous song, (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover. I thought I'd share it here before I post it on social media.

I Googled a few photos for guidance as I'm not brilliant at drawing completely from scratch, and made up some vector illustrations almost entirely with the Pen tool (rather than starting with shapes, my usual method), switching between Designer and Photo and back as I went along. The wavy text I made by rasterising Artistic Text and applying the Mesh Warp tool: turning on the grid made sure I applied the distortion evenly. The leaves and clouds are simply Cloud shapes, while the flowers I did with a pixel brush on layers clipped to their vector layers. Finally, the VE Day 75 logo is easy to find online, but only in pixel format, so I downloaded one and made up a vector version. The letters are Arial Black, but the numerals aren't: I couldn't find a close enough match in the fonts I have, so I made them as vectors too. 

(BTW, I'm not forgetting the war against Japan. I'll see what appears.)

This was originally A2 in size, but I've reduced it for posting ...

VE-Day-00.jpg.67465817e0bb25315ec40c43e79a6100.jpg


 

 

Shepherd.jpg

Valley.jpg

Johnny.jpg

VE-DAY-LOGO.afdesign

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4 minutes ago, Kasper-V said:

By the way, those are NOT bluebirds -- they're swifts!

They’re also not over the white cliffs of Dover, so no one should expect them to be bluebirds!

As usual, Steve, very nicely done. thumbup1.gif

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53 minutes ago, Alfred said:

They’re also not over the white cliffs of Dover, so no one should expect them to be bluebirds!

Well, you may say I'm jumping to conclusions, but I thought maybe Americans are as good at geography as they are at ornithology!

Thank you for the compliment.

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Very warm and charming images, I almost expected Ethel & Ernest to be included in one of the pictures.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

These are not my own words but I sure like this quote.

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That song still brings tears to my eyes.  Being a VERY OLD CROCK, I can remember where I was on VE Day.  And we still have bluebirds — my favorites.  Although no White Cliffs in my neighborhood.


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As a slightly younger crock, it was a little before my time, but my parents and grandparents told me about it when I was small, and I've studied the period since. Of course, Bluebirds was written by an American songwriter before the US entered the War, and it's an interesting story. He wanted to write a song like Somewhere over the rainbow to cheer up us Brits in our time of trouble, and also to bring the domestic side of it all to Americans' attention: as I'm sure you know, there was a lot of support there both for coming in and for staying out). The song was a runaway hit for Vera, to her great surprise! But it certainly did wonders for morale -- so thank you for that, America.

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@Kasper-V  My father was an American historian who spent the entire war years glued to the radio each evening to follow the war news.  My first understanding of the gravity was when our family stopped at a border crossing between Canada and the USA in 1939 to learn that Poland had been invaded.  My father was devastated.  He was an integral part of a weekly radio broadcast to people in our State called “Questions and Opinions” designed to help everyone understand all that was happening.  My family was most certainly for “Going in” rather than “staying out.”   WWII was another ocean away, but very near to us in this way on a daily basis.  My sister and I (8 and 7) were writing a children’s book on the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed.  It rather interrupted our literary genius for a few weeks and definitely prevented it ever being published — although my father’s publisher (Macmillan and Co) had expressed an interest.   The only good thing about the war was that when we had air raid drills or warnings, and the lights had to go out and the curtains drawn, we couldn’t see in the dark to eat the boring food which we were otherwise refusing to eat.  My father would announce that we could leave the table.  VICTORY of a sort.


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