Sketched May 23, 26 and 27
These days, you can’t walk a block around downtown without feeling the presence of construction workers.
Donning hard hats and reflective gear, they are impossible to miss. They are digging trenches, pouring concrete, loading trucks, operating cranes.
They mingle with the office crowds at lunchtime and can be spotted with looks of exhaustion on their faces when their shifts end at about 3 in the afternoon.
As I aim to draw life in Seattle, I recently set myself the challenge of sketching construction crews up close, chasing them around downtown in hopes that they’d spare a few minutes of their time with me. I also connected with a couple of them via social media.
The random encounters gave me a new perspective about Seattle’s construction boom. The city’s transformation is providing well-paid jobs to workers from all over. The ones I met were from Seattle, the Northwest and beyond. And they all seemed quite proud of what they do. At the end of the day, they have the satisfaction of building something bigger than themselves.
I caught up with Donna at Eighth Avenue and Blanchard Street, where a 40-story tower will soon rise. She told me workers from all over the Northwest are working in Seattle during the current construction boom. For her, home is Montana, and she is looking forward to retiring soon and moving there permanently. She’s been in construction for more than 20 years and mentioned the good pay as one of the top incentives for the job.
Jerry, Derek and Maleek had just taken a break from painting the steel frames of the Amazon spheres when I approached them on the street. They invited me to tag along for lunch. That’s how friendly construction workers are, as Derek noted during our chat. Jerry and Maleek are U.S. Army veterans who stayed in the Northwest after finishing their service at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Knowing that, at the end of the day, you get to go home safe is a big plus of the job, said Jerry, who deployed to Baghdad during his military service.
Brian answered my Facebook post asking for construction workers who’d be willing to be sketched. I met him and his co-worker Eduardo at Second Avenue and Pine Street, the site where another 40-story tower is being built. Eduardo said he got a degree in construction management, but as a union worker specialized in window insulation he can make more money. “We make $85,000,” he said. Brian, who is 47, said construction jobs follow the economic cycles. Now things are good, but it was tough during the recession. As a native Seattleite, he said the best part of the job is “putting my thumbprint on the city I love.”
David was enjoying his lunch break on a bench by Pike Place Market when I showed up with my iPad, the tool I used to make all these sketches. A New Yorker by residence, he is used to traveling for his job managing crews specialized in pouring concrete, or “shotcrete,” as this construction field is known as. Seattle is a very laid-back city, said David. Even with the current construction boom, he doesn’t think our downtown will ever be as hectic as Manhattan. We are not walking should-to-shoulder yet, he said.
About the sketches: All these portraits were created on my iPad Air 2 using the ProCreate drawing app. I started the drawings while meeting the construction workers and finished them later from memory. To learn more about my sketching process, follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.