"Under the Monorail", Seattle cityscape, oil painting by Robin Weiss

"Under the Monorail" 10x6 oil on panel SOLD

Maury and I hang out in the city every time we get the chance.....which is fairly often.  I'm usually over a couple times a month..Sometimes we find a spot to sit and sketch , other times we walk around taking pictures of everything like tourists.... hoping for a photo that will yield elements that we can use in a composition for painting. This time we were headed for the Five Point Cafe.....our newest favorite place to eat lunch.  This scene has two classic Seattle monuments, The Space Needle and the Monorail,  which leads from Westlake to Seattle Center.


This is my first painting of the Monorail, but I have painted the Space Needle many times . You can see my painting of the most well known view of this iconic symbol of Seattle here.

The Space Needle was built for the 1962 Worlds Fair.It has 25 lightning rods. It is built to withstand winds of up to 200miles an hour and earthquakes up to 9.1 magnitude. The earthquake stability of the Space Needle was ensured when a hole was dug 30 feet deep and 120 feet across, and 467 concrete trucks took one full day to fill it. The foundation weighs 5850 tons, including 250 tons of reinforcing steel. With this concrete base weighing the same as the above-ground structure, the Needle's center of gravity is just 5 feet above ground level. The structure is bolted to the foundation with 72 bolts, each one 30 feet long.

Here is the latest "Art" project associated with the Space Needle.  Apparently, Angry Birds needed a launching pad to get into space and decided that the Space Needle would be perfect!.......Looks like he's going to smash into the restaurant to me....


Photo by Todd Bishop on GeekWire.com