Final UK Sketching adventures

As promised, here is the last of my sketching adventures in the UK, mostly of things I brought back and a little bit of sketching on the way home.

This guy is currently hanging on my mini-Christmas tree in my living room and making me so happy! I love the crazy bangs on the cow and the fact that he is playing the bagpipe. ADORABLE.

I confess, I haven’t actually eaten this. I stashed it in my luggage in case I needed a snack at some point in our journey and then forgot to eat it or throw it away so it came all the way across the pond with me. I cam down with a cold as I was flying home so I didn’t want a candy bar for a couple weeks afterward as I recovered and now it is old. What does one do with an old, strange foreign candy bar?

My beloved blue luggage, sketched while waiting in Seatac for my flight home to Spokane to distract myself from the way my sinuses were pounding.

I drew various bills during the trip and drew the coins when I got home (coins and a couple of fivers were what was left at the end of the trip, no worries, I’m sure I’ll be back in the UK eventually!), adding paint all at the end. Money in the UK is interesting and shows how we’re a bit of an odd duck with our purely paper, one size, all green money. This stuff is plastic-y (goes the wash great, but apparently can get stuck together which is no good when paying bills!), has clear sections, is different sizes at different denominations and comes in all sorts of colors. I enjoyed seeing the difference between bank notes issued by the Bank of England and those by the Bank of Scotland. A theme among everyone though? So many drawings of Queen Elizabeth!

Artist's Eye in Edinburgh

Here is the second to last blog post about my sketching adventures in the U.K. this past August! If you’re getting this on my email newsletter, feel free to click through to the blog to see my previous sketches in Ireland! Updates about my Artist’s Eye on Spokane Book Kickstarter and the shows I’ll be at this holiday season.

Now: SCOTLAND!

We continued on from Dublin to York (didn’t manage to do much sketching there)and then up to Scotland. This is the York Train Station which when it was built in the late 19th century, was the largest train station in the world. I got this scene sketched in pen before Dad came careening around the corner to tell us that our train was here and we needed to MOVE. Mom and I grabbed our stuff and booked it down the very long platforms and caught out train to Edinburgh. I painted it later based on some quick photos and memories.

Fancy British train snacks. They really love their trolley carts here.

The moody view from our hotel at one of the various volcanic mounds surrounding the town of Edinburgh. It rained and was in the low 60’s which was very confusing coming from Spokane August weather.

We had dinner in the castle before the Edinburgh Tattoo (an event that has been on Dad’s bucket list since he studied abroad in York in college). I got a seat at the end of the table which I loved because the view was AMAZING! We had haggis (surprisingly good!) and I was delighted that they piped it into the room and back out again.

I wore all the clothes that I packed for the night show of the Edinburgh Tattoo. It was 50 degrees and rained at the beginning of the show enough that my pen wouldn’t write on my paper and I had to switch to pencil. Luckily, the rain cleared up and we were wowed by a Lebanese performance group riding horses and drumming, a Swiss troop that lit their drumsticks on fire, and SO MANY bagpipes.

Sketched while waiting for fish and chips at the Doric in Edinburgh. The Walter Scott monument peeked out from above this wall. It is the largest monument to a writer in the world. Edinburgh is a very literary city.

Next up: Adventures in trying to get home and what I brought back.

Ireland is Gorgeous!

We spent several days roaming about Ireland. I know that the UK experienced a severe drought this summer, but it rained several times while we were there and, as a Spokanite, I hadn’t seen rain in months. It was excellent but confusing.

This is a college that was a short walk from our hotel. The rest of the family decided to go to bed early (It was 8pm but we weren’t adjusted to the time zone yet!), but I decided to walk back despite the stormy skies and try to get in a quick sketch. I sat just inside the wrought iron gates in case they closed at a certain hour and I’d have to Indian Jones my way through before they locked me in (High stone walls are everywhere in Ireland!).

This drawing got made because we made a miscalculation about when our train back to Dublin left and I got a spare hour to sketch this Gothic beauty that was across the street from the station.

Painted later.

O’Neil’s is a sprawling pub in Dublin that had multiple bars on multiple floors. We sat near the Whiskey Bar, but there was also the Lounge Bar, the Wine bar, and more (SO many staircases!)! Food was downstairs and some of it was a deli/cafeteria style but it was also a to-order restaurant. In conclusion, we were so confused and ended up spending a ton of time there trying to figure out what we needed to do to get some food!. We were there so late, we decided to hang on just a little longer when we learned there was going to be live music. We were rewarded for our patience. I drew a million whiskey bottles.

Surprise live music at the bar! It was fabulous and there were two Irish dancers who performed mere feet from our table. One of those magical moments of travel where you luck into something amazing.

We took a little prop plane from Ireland over to England. I was going to give my brother my window seat just to be nice, but then I saw this view and told him, “Offer revoked!”