Clear Sky Over Gas Works Park

 

1/19/26 Gas Works Park

On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our cold but clear skies continued. Bundled up, I took the top down for my drive to Gas Works Park, where many young people and families were enjoying the holiday. (Aside: A large party of Spanish-speaking picnickers laughed and talked happily as they shared food spread out on the grass. I was heartened to see them because it meant that they – unlike many others in this country – felt safe enough in a Seattle park to gather publicly to enjoy the day, just like everyone else there. I felt compassion and sadness for all darker-skinned people who would not feel safe doing the same wherever they live. Dr. King’s message from six decades ago is, sadly, still just a dream.)

Using chunky Derwent Inktense Blocks to sketch a part of the gas works that I’ve sketched previously many times, I recalled how much time and energy I used to spend trying to render each one of the many pipes connecting the huge tanks and how frustrating it often was to try to draw what I couldn’t see clearly or understand where they connected (here’s one example from 2014). It took me a long time, but I finally realized I don’t have to draw all that to convey the essence of the gas works.

Color note: Although I used the same limited palette of Inktense Blocks as the one I used at Green Lake, the hues are such that they look mostly “normal” at Gas Works Park – that is, I had a green for grass, blue for water and sky, and rusty tones for the tanks. Still, if I’d had a full range to select from, these are not the colors I would have chosen for this scene, so they still seem a bit wacky to me. Overall, though, I can feel my brain finally making a shift toward seeing that hues do not have to match “reality” to read as “real.”

Technical note: As soon as I tried using the “licking” technique for the sky, I regretted it. Although I remembered that Inktense Blocks fail at this trick (compared to most solid water-soluble products), I guess I had hoped that the Blocks had learned the trick since the last time I used them. Nope.