Gasworks Park

Last month, I took a trip with the Dalvero Academy to Seattle and San Francisco. I'm just starting to go through those drawings now, and I just knew the first thing I had to share was my favorite place in Seattle, Gasworks Park. As some of you may have seen in past posts (like here) I love drawing big, dirty machinery. Basically, if it's industrial, I love to draw it - bonus points if it's old. Gasworks Park is the site of a coal gasification plant that closed down in 1956. Then the city of Seattle bought it and said, "So what if tar still occasionally oozes from the ground? Let's make it a park!" And so they did, and it's awesome!

Frisbee-players and bike riders frolic amongst the hulking machinery of a past era. (Click on the drawing to see it larger)

They even built a kite-flying hill. I love Seattle!

I might post some other studies of Gasworks Park another time. In the meantime, check out my friends here and here to see some of their Seattle drawings!

"We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us."

That's from Marshall McLuhan, my man for saying things that make my brain go fizzy. I thought it was an appropriate title for the theme of today's post: tools! The things we make are always a wonder to me. Giant buildings and bridges, huge interstates, our creations cover (too much of?) the Earth. How did we make them? How did we go from these soft, pink, fairly useless creatures to Masters of the Universe? Our machines and tools explain a lot about that, and how we think, and then how our thinking is shaped in turn (thanks Marshall!).




I did two of these. Somehow when I finish a drawing, I want to draw the same thing again, but different.


And here's the man with the hammer!