Georgetown Trailer Park Mall

8/19/12 Copic Multiliner SP pen, watercolor, Stillman & Birn sketchbook

Georgetown, a historic south Seattle neighborhood that is “arguably the oldest neighborhood of Seattle,” was an ideal site for a sketchcrawl: It has lots of aged buildings (some charming, some historic, some just old).

Although I’ve been a lifelong Seattle resident, Georgetown is relatively unfamiliar to me, so other than knowing that it was full of interesting architecture (more perspective challenges to overcome! AUGGGHH!), I wasn’t sure what to expect. I started wandering aimlessly down an alley, and only a block or two from All City Coffee where the Seattle Urban Sketchers initially met up, I found myself at the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall. It turns out to be world-famous! Unfortunately, it was closed on Sunday, but I was just as happy to have the place to myself so I could park my camp stool in the parking lot and sketch these two trailers. Although my watercolor painting doesn’t really show it, the surface of the Shasta trailer was covered with hundreds of colorful stickers.

8/19/12 Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pen, watercolor, Stillman & Birn sketchbook

As I sketched, planes bound for Boeing field roared by overhead so close that I felt like ducking every time one passed. Behind me, a rooster cockle-doodle-doo’d unenthusiastically, perhaps because by then it was nearly noon.