My April Adventures!

I’ve been busy in April enjoying working on various creative projects that don’t have anything to do with my work, such as messing around with making yard art and turning a giant cardboard roll into a huge pencil. It’s been fun to work with my creativity in a different way-3D!

In other new, I’m a big reader and the highlight of April for me was a gathering with my book club in Quincy. We have members in Seattle, Portland and Deer Park so Quincy was the closest we could get to the mid-point. On my trip to the Airbnb I stopped off at the Feathers-a basalt column ridge that is just 10 minutes off of 1-90 and is very popular with rock climbers.

I was able to just walk up to this cool formation and watch the rock climbers working on scaling them.

I was absolutely charmed by the gap between two of the “Feathers” and the sliver of sunlight field beyond it. When I stepped through, I discovered that I had parked in an unofficial parking lot as I looked out over multiple tents pitched around a larger paved spot. Children ran around laughing and voices floated down from the climbers up above my head.

Our Airbnb was one of these modernist houses on the Cave B Winery complex. I’d highly recommend it. The location is stunning and you can walk to the lip of the gorge (as well as the Gorge Amphitheater venue!)

This shows you the view of the Columbia.

Some of the group wanted to do some wine tasting, so I sketched as we sat on the lawn.

Yellow bells and the below columbia variation of the arrowleaf balsamroot that I see in the Spokane area were both in bloom, but the major flush of spring growth is probably happening right around now.

So cheery!

We walked part of the Upper Ancient Lakes Trailhead and this is the view of Frenchman’s Coulee from the top of a cliff. You can just see the waterfall in the distance, descending the fatherest cliff on the right. New goal-returning to hike out closer to the waterfall some day!

I continued my drive west and stopped at the University of Washington to catch the tail end of the cherry blossom bloom at the quad. There was a lot of rain and wind on my way over the pass and you can the cherry blossom petals fallen like pink snow on the ground.

I was lucky that there was a break in the weather so I was able to squeeze in a sketch in around an hour. I had my hood up and cinched against the wind for most of it. Thank goodness for gortex!

Even past their prime, the trees are just stunning!

Further progress on the sketch!

The cherry blossoms got into everything!

Final sketch!

Finally-if you’re planning to go out and about for First Friday (the 5th)-I’ll be hanging out at the new Spokane Art School location on 2nd with my fellow teachers for the faculty art show. I’d love to see you!

Painting at La Push

A couple weeks back I went on my annual summer camping trip with my friend Danielle. Last year we went to Mt. Rainier. This year we headed to the coast to the La Push area, which was beautiful. We laughed because she would put on a swimsuit and go swim in the ocean and I would sit on the beach in my long pants and long sleeve shirt, jacket, and big hat because I’ve acclimated to living in 90 degree temperatures. not the low 70’s and high 60’s that we experienced. I told her, “These are night time temperatures where I live!” It was so refreshing and a wonderful break from the heat over here in Eastern Washington.

First Beach was closest to our campsite so we visited it often, including watching the sun set behind these rocks one evening in an absolutely incredible gradient of color.

This is First Beach facing the other way. We frequently saw surfers, especially later in the day. They wore wet suits, sometimes even with hoods over the head to help them stand the cold of the ocean.

All of the beaches had these incredible ancient trees washed up on their high tide lines. Some still had the webbing of their root balls still intact, creating fascinating shapes. People and perhaps waves put stones in their crevices and “shelves”.

The Washington Coast almost always has a breeze and that makes it great for kite flying. I love kites. They are magical and almost alive in a way. I especially love kites that are unusual shapes (koi, birds, fish, airplanes).

We hiked the 1.5 trail down to Third Beach which had the atmosphere of a secluded cove, except for the fact that it was FULL of people camping in tents on the sands, nestled in among the driftwood logs. The tide must not come up all that high this time of year. I would definitely want a tide chart if I camped down there. It would not be fun to wake up to find the ocean coming to visit me in my tent in the middle of the night.

We walked down Rialto Beach to "Hole-In-The-Wall” a literal hole, now an arch, in one of the rock outcroppings . The tide was in enough that we couldn’t walk into it so I painted this instead. It was early in the morning when the air was still full of mist with the sun just starting to break through.

This is the “Tree of Life” at Kalaloch Beach. It stands on the high wall that abuts the beach and the soil is eroding out from under it. It won’t be able to hold itself up for much longer. While I painted, people walked by and took selfies with the tree. Some people jumped up and hung from the roots, which made me groan in sympathy for the tree.

We spent an entire day at Ruby Beach and I painted constantly. There was so much to see!

A lighthouse in the distance.

There were many rock outcroppings and there was some drama when a teenage boy climbed to the top of one and got stuck and couldn’t get down again. Luckily a passerby who had rock climbing experience was walking by and he went up the rock and talked the kid down. It was his 18th birthday! Happy Birthday to him! (And his poor mother who was watching with her hand over her mouth the whole time.)

The beaches were very popular and we saw out of state license plates in the parking lot, which startled both of us because we sort of think of this area as a “Washington Place” not something that people outside of the PNW know about but there were license plates from the Midwest and East Coast as well. What a long drive!

I’d like to come back to the coast during a shoulder season (fall or spring) and paint because I bet the atmosphere and weather that happen during those more turbulent times would be so dramatic! I would need to pack my all weather gear though and there would be no camping for sure. I’d have to find a cabin or Airbnb. Still-a fun idea!

Have you gone anywhere fun this summer? Do you have any places you think I should explore to paint in the PNW region?

Final Kolkata Adventures

We spent some time in the South Park Street Cemetary, a historic walled cemetery that housed many British citizens from the colonial era. It was extremely sobering to see the ages listed on many of the large monuments. It was rare to see an age over 40. According to a booklet we got at the office, British citizens who traveled to India lasted about two monsoon seasons before succumbing to tropical diseases.

This was the largest obelisk in the cemetery and it is even bigger in real life. I had to squish it a bit to fit it on the page!

There were many monuments in this style and homeless people lived in them years ago before the cemetery was restored.

This is the Marble Palace, an enormous house of a very wealthy family that still lives in one wing. It is a museum now. We had to pay a bribe to get in because you’re supposed to fill out paperwork with the government to get in, but our Indian friends told us that that process is so impossible that it is better to just give the guard money. We did and were lead on a tour through rooms filled with classical sculpture, huge Chinese vases, and more. The floors were elaborate inlaid marble and oil paintings papered the walls. The lights were turned on as we entered a room and turned off as we left. There was a sense of decaying grandeur in the air.

I was constantly agog at the beautiful outfits of the women out and about on the streets.

The pollution resulted in pink, hazy sunsets, most obvious out in the countryside.

A leftover from the first post! This is my husband doing sudoku in the Telegraph newspaper.

Many of the stores in Kolkata were tiny, sometimes just alcoves with the proprietor sitting on a shelf. This store was just down the block from our friend’s house and we got our water from them. They didn’t speak much English, but whenever they saw us coming, they’d get out the water! Doing this sketch in the neighborhood attracted around forty people in the hour and a half it took me to do it. I had a group of older gentlemen move their bench so they could sit directly behind me and watch my every move!

I spotted this pink and blue house on a walk around our friend’s neighborhood. Buildings are so much more colorful in India than in the US.

There was a frame shop by our friend’s house and they had a collection of Jamini Roy prints in their frames.

Our trip to India was remarkable-a land of many contrasts and incredible energy, but I have to admit that it is good to be home!

Sketching in Kolkata

Kolkata traffic is astounding-cars, trucks, motorcycles, these three wheeled autos, everyone honking and weaving through the streets cutting each other off. Serious accidents are rare because nobody can get up enough speed to damage each other because there are just too many other vehicles in the way. Still, the number of pedestrians crossing the street or standing in the road was BONKERS. Plus, of course, the cows in the road. We took Ubers because renting a car would be suicidal and that way we didn’t have to worry about communicating the address to the driver-it just went directly to their phone.

This is the main temple at the Belur Math complex in Kolkata. This is probably my favorite sketch from the entire trip. We found a place in the shade and I spent a little over an hour doggedly working on this sketch, trying to finish before they kicked us out (they close midday and then open again in the late afternoon). As was usual, we attracted a lot of attention and people drifted over to either ask us for a selfie (For real, so many requests while we were there. We had to have a strict no selfie policy or else that is all we would have been doing!) or to see what I was up to. We had some nice conversations with some other families enjoying the shade as well.

This is one wing of the enormous family home of Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel prize winning poet and writer. It is HUGE museum about him and his accomplishments and the world events surrounding his life at the turn of the last century. Because it is technically a home, we had to take off our shoes and walk barefoot through the rooms and displays.

I have no idea why there are terracotta pots/vases tied to this tree. I saw several trees like this on our adventures, but I couldn’t ever get a satisfactory answer.

A montage page, bits and pieces of the day. The cab was drawn from a photo because none of them stay still long enough for me to draw. I nearly got run down by it just trying to take a picture!

Trying to draw fascinating flowers in the Botanical Garden, but had to give up partway through this drawing because of the mosquitoes. Too many bites and they swelled up HUGE so I decided to move on.

A colorfully paintined storefront door on the left, and a sculpted framed relief of Ganesh on the right.

On the left: A doorway with what I think might be Kali over looking it and on the right, an older couple walking in front of a worn wall.

We went to the zoo because Luke had never seen a live tiger before. We saw several and got to hear them roar which was a smidge hair raising. I loved all these pink birds and managed a couple sketches before wilting in the heat-around 95 degrees with 70% humidity.

One more post to go!

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!”

Megan Sketches in the U.K.

It is the summer of international travel for me! I jaunted off to the UK with my family-Ireland, the UK and Scotland this time!

Ireland seems to be filled with musical people and listening to this performance reminded me how much Irish music has spread all over the world.

Adorable dsesserts and amazing dancers!

A quick sketch before an ENORMOUS bowl of mussels for dinner in Dublin.

Small sketches of views from the train during which there was singing by passengers. In the US, if people sang on public transit people would kick you off the train!

Ireland seemed to have a lot of buildings with a strong divide between upper residential floors and commercial ground floor. I loved the bright green of this building and the amusing name of the bakery.

Japan Adventures

So to add to the excitement of finishing my 52 week painting project, at the end of May I took off for Japan with my parents and brother for a little family adventure. We went to Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Takayama, and Osaka. I had a great time and I'd love to go back to Japan just for a painting excursion, though I'm feeling very lucky that we just missed the earthquake in Osaka.

Kando Myojin, a shinto shrine in Tokyo. We watched a BMW get blessed by a Shinto priest in traidtional garb.

At most shrines there is a stand or two for people to tie on their wishes and prayers, often on small wooden boards. This one was absolutely packed!

Collaged paper with kanji and hiragana on it (left), calligraphy done as a religious prayer/act by temple staff in exchange for a donation to the temple (right).

We were in a tour group for the first part of the trip as we shuttled around to all the different cities.

On the bullet train, my brother looking out the window.

We left Tokyo and headed up into the mountains and some smaller towns. More to come!

Costa Rican Rainforest Adventures

Well, it may not seem to make much sense, starting off a blog called "Artist's Eye on Spokane" with a post about a trip to Costa Rica, but I'm doing it anyway. A test run to make sure that everything is working (Is this on? Can anybody hear me?) and it is the most exciting thing to have happened to me recently. Plus, who doesn't like pictures of exotic places?

So! To start off, I'm Megan Perkins, artist and explorer extraordinaire (Hey, I'm writing this, that means I get to style myself however I like!). Last October I was on my way back to a trip to Hawaii when I did a quick painting of an Alaska Airlines airplane while waiting for my flight to board.

Long story short, when I got home, I put this picture up on social media and Alaska Airlines found it. They shared it on their Instagram account where it became one of the top nine most liked images for 2016. An Alaska Airlines representative emailed me to ask for my address because they'd like to send me something. "Sure," I told them, thinking "Alaska Airlines totebag!"

Guys, it was two round trip tickets to anywhere Alaska flies!!! OH MY GOSH, I was SO excited. Costa Rica stood out for obvious reasons (WARM, TROPICAL, and I've never been there!). I immediately began planning and we left mid-April for 10 days in the (nearly) equatorial country, exploring volcanic national parks, rain forests, rivers, and cloud forests.

Guys, I know this may come as a surprise, but it is WET and misty in a cloud forest!

There are a lot of exotic looking plants. Some were familiar, house plants where we live. Others, I had no idea what there were!

Strangler fig wrapping this tree

I had some time to sketch the view into the rain forest canopy. So much green!

I drew some of the plants we saw often with notes about what I learned about them.

Orchids were also common and super impressive!

Let's end with a picture of the beautiful Quetzal. Worshiped as a god by the Aztecs, they are colorful birds with stunningly long tail feathers and slightly mournful call. As a child, I had an A to Z Animal Pop Up Book and, you guessed it, Q was for Quetzal. I never thought I would actually see this magnificent bird in person, but now I can say that I have and what an experience it was.