Soggy Morning at Gas Works Park

8/15/14 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey ink, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

After all those consecutive days of beautiful sunshine, I had deluded myself into thinking it was the new normal. I woke to drizzle, but weather.com had predicted that the rain would stop by mid-morning, when the ad hoc Friday sketchers were meeting at Gas Works Park.

Perched on my stool under a tree for my first sketch of some of the gas works, I was still in denial as increasingly frequent raindrops blurred my Platinum Carbon Black lines. By 11 it was barely spitting, so a few of us walked over to the marina on the east side of the park to sketch the houseboats, and I insisted that the rain would be stopping soon. I looked out over Lake Union and immediately saw a challenging Shari Blaukopf assignment for myself: the reflections of the moored houseboats and dappled water. The rain did let up as I was drawing the houseboat on the right, but within minutes I had to pull my hood on again, and my sketch was starting to take on that dreamy look (or perhaps nightmare, depending on your perspective). The wet-on-wet-on-wet approach isn’t one of my favorite watercolor techniques.

8/15/14 Platinum Carbon, Diamine Grey, Diamine Chocolate Brown and Pilot Iroshizuku Chiku-rin inks, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils