Fremont / Gas Works Park

This was an odd day of sketching. I came into town to be part of the Seattle Plein Aire painting event and was befriended sometime around noon by an intoxicated self admitted drug addict who calls Gas Works Park his home (he lives in one of the old industrial structures that make up the park). The work on my second sketch virtually came to a halt as he realized I was a captive audience (pack, chair, and easel - I wasn't going anywhere) and lectured Hopper-esk (Dennis not Edward) to me for most of the afternoon.

I was trying to be nice and didn't tell this guy to go away, but I should have - he caught me completely off guard when he wet his fingers with tears (he was recalling a family tragedy then walked over and started painting on my sketch with his wet fingers....then he grabbed the sketch
book and walked away with it to a table of associates he had been drinking with earlier. I didn't get the book back until I gave him a pen to do a drawing with. I was trying to be diplomatic and violence isn't my style (and did I really want to mix it up with a drug addict?).

I pulled out an half used inexpensive watercolor tablet and exchanged it for my sketchbook, told him to keep the tablet and the pen....He told me he was going to do a drawing for me and showed me where I could find it the next time I came back to the park. Strange days.....