Hi, I'm Stephanie.
Artist. Adventurer. Brit in Washington.
I moved from England to Washington six years ago and somewhere along the way, exploring my new home turned into drawing it.
Today, I'm working toward a wild goal: to personally visit and illustrate every ski resort in America and create artwork inspired by every National Park.
But really, I Love Washington began with something much simpler:
I fell in love with a place and wanted to draw it.
I WASN'T ALWAYS A WASHINGTON ARTIST.
I grew up in England, trained as an elementary school teacher, and have always had a slightly restless curiosity about the world. I get that curiosity from my Grandparents who were still doing road trips together around Europe in their 80's. R.I.P
I've now traveled to 29 countries and lived on four continents, but in 2020, life brought me somewhere completely different:
Cle Elum, Washington.
Suddenly, mountains weren't somewhere I traveled to see. They were outside my window.
Weekends became road trips, hikes, lakes, waterfalls, mountain towns and National Parks. I started discovering the places that make Washington feel like Washington — and slowly, those adventures started finding their way onto my iPad.
What began as drawing the places around my new home started as I Love Cle Elum and eventually became I Love Washington.
IF I HAVEN'T BEEN THERE,
I DON'T DRAW IT.
That has been my rule from the beginning.
Before somewhere becomes an illustration, I want to experience it.
I want to stand at the viewpoint, ride the gondola, hike the trail, see the mountain in person and understand what makes that particular place memorable.
Sometimes that means driving across Washington. Sometimes it means hiking in. Sometimes it means strapping on a snowboard.
And sometimes it means getting on a plane.
The adventure comes first. The artwork comes second.
BACK HOME, THE DRAWING BEGINS.
Every illustration starts with a blank screen.
I draw by hand on my iPad using my Apple Pen and traditional illustration techniques — building landscapes line by line, shape by shape and layer by layer.
A single piece can take me anywhere from 25 to 70 hours to complete.
There are no AI-generated landscapes hiding behind the scenes.
No stock illustrations with a destination name added afterward.
Just me, an iPad, an Apple Pen, far too many layers, and usually a photograph from an adventure I can't stop thinking about.
I DON'T ACTUALLY DO ALL OF THIS ALONE.
Behind most adventures are two very important members of the unofficial I Love Washington team.
My boyfriend is my adventure partner, fellow snowboarder, road-trip companion and — perhaps less glamorously — the person helping me haul tents, tables, boxes of puzzles and artwork around Washington during farmers market season.
We snowboard together, explore together and inevitably end up scouting places that might become future drawings.
And then there's Avi.
MEET AVI
Chief Adventure Officer.*
Avi is my Shiba Inu and another regular member of the adventure crew.
He's there for road trips, walks, exploring and plenty of the everyday life that happens between drawing and running a small business.
Like most Shibas, he has his own opinions about how things should be done.
He doesn't contribute much to the drawing process or understand wholesale pricing, but morale would undoubtedly suffer without him.
Job title entirely unofficial.
THE BEST PART HAPPENS OFFLINE.
For four years, farmers markets have been a huge part of I Love Washington.
They're early mornings, ridiculously full vehicles, tents, tables, unpredictable weather and a lot of carrying boxes.
But they're also where I get to meet the people who recognize the places I've drawn.
Someone will point to a print and tell me that's where they went on a first date and years later was proposed to.
Someone else remembers skiing there as a child. For others they see their home mountain.
A customer finds the lake their family visits every summer.
Those conversations have made me realize that I'm not really drawing mountains, lakes and waterfalls.
It's not just about the landscape. It's about what happened there.
I'm drawing places attached to people's memories. The special ones. The places that became part of their story and, in some small way, helped make them who they are today.
That's why you'll see me repeat the phrase “Celebrate the places you love.”
It's more than a tagline to me. I genuinely believe there's something good about surrounding ourselves with reminders of the places where we were happy, adventurous, brave, in love — or simply completely ourselves.
The landscape is what I draw.
The memory is what makes it yours.
GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY THAT GAVE ME SO MUCH
When I moved from England to Washington, I didn't just find beautiful places to draw. I found a community that made this corner of the world feel like home.
As I Love Washington has grown, I've tried to give something back in the way I know best — through my time, creativity and artwork.
Over the years, I've donated artwork to the Upper County Co-op Preschool Dinner & Live Auction, the Warrior Baseball Dinner & Auction, and the Teanaway Grange Scholarship Fund, helping support local children, student-athletes and scholarships.
For three years, I also created the Candypaws Calendar, raising money for ARRF, our local animal rescue in Roslyn — a project particularly close to my heart.
And for our local firefighters, I designed the KCFD7 Challenge Coin artwork completely free of charge, contributing my time and illustration work as a small thank-you to people who give so much of theirs to our community.
BECAUSE BEING A LOCAL BUSINESS SHOULD MEAN BEING PART OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY.
This community supported my markets, bought my artwork and helped turn something I loved doing into a real business.
So when I can donate a piece, contribute a drawing or use my creativity to help something local, I try to.
Art has given me a lot. I love when it gives me the opportunity to give something back.
APPARENTLY, WASHINGTON WASN'T ENOUGH.
What started close to home has grown into something much bigger.
I want to personally visit and illustrate every ski resort in America and create artwork inspired by every U.S. National Park.
It's going to take a while.
And that's exactly the point.
There will always be another mountain to snowboard, another trail to walk, another National Park to explore and another blank canvas waiting when I get home.
I'm not trying to finish the adventure. I'm building a business that gives me a reason to keep having it.
CELEBRATE THE PLACES YOU LOVE.
I know what it's like to discover somewhere and have it become part of your story.
That's why I draw.
Every illustration begins with a real place, a real adventure and a memory worth bringing home.
There are still hundreds of mountains, parks, towns, trails and landscapes left for me to discover.
I hope you'll follow along.
