Painting: Seattle Beach

My latest painting is a 30 x 80 cm oil on canvas. I have a preferance for long narrow canvases as they make for interesting compositions and, as someone who works primarily from photographs, I have to think carefully about how to crop the original image.

I was looking through my photos from my trip to America last summer, looking for something to paint, and came across this one which I don't even remember taking. I zoomed in on the image and knew straight away which canvas I was going to use.

The beach is Golden Gardens Park and my boyfriend and I took a trip there on our last full day in Seattle. We took the bus and asked the bus driver to let us know when it was our stop which he did by shouting back to us, "I am officially kicking you off the bus." Good guy.

I'm now on Instagram! @lisagharrold

This is the first large painting I've done since moving in to my boyfriend's tiny flat. Thank goodness for my table easel. That, combined with my old computer table, made for a pretty good workspace that didn't take over the whole living area.

Seattle and Portland Travel Journal

When I went on holiday this summer to Seattle and Portland I took a travel journal with me like I did for my trip to Nashville and New York. Again, it was made from parts of old Paperchase planners. 

I stuck in things we'd collected during the day, like bus tickets and shop receipts, and then wrote about the day around them. I made sure to write about each day on the day, or the next morning at the latest, so I didn't forget anything.  

I found ways to include other things we picked up, like this leaflet for Huber's restaurant; Portland's oldest restaurant. That was a dining experience I don't want to forget! I threaded cotton through two holes I made in the leaflet and tied it around the center spiral.

Once we got home I ordered some prints online of our holiday snaps that I could cut up, punch holes in and add to the book. I love being able to illustrate the stories we'd written about with pictures.

This Summer I...

I've been rather quiet online over the summer because I've been really busy offline. But now summer is over and I'm ready to tell you all about it.

At the start of August I went to Seattle! My boyfriend's best friend was getting married there so we flew over for the wedding, and did lots of touristy things at the same time.

The wedding was lovely; the venue was really pretty, it was catered by Chipotle, and it gave me a chance to show off all my best dance moves.

We used Air BnB and stayed in an apartment which was about a 10 minutes walk from Green Lake, which was near the wedding venue.

We saw fish being thrown at Pike Place, went on the monorail, went to the Science Center, had a barbeque in the woods near the lake, saw the first Starbucks, watched a Say Yes to the Dress Marathon on the morning of the wedding...

And we went to see a baseball game which, between you and me, was pretty boring. But at least there were chicken fingers!

Stay tuned to find out where I went next!