‘Yellow Submarine’ becomes inspiration for artwork on couple’s propane tank

Published 1:30 am Monday, May 25, 2026

GARDINER — Sometimes you have to prove to yourself you can still bring your A game.

To Monika Livingstone, 66, of Gardiner, that meant taking a deep dive into both painting again and her love of The Beatles.

Livingstone, who has lived the past 20 years in the area with her husband Dave White, said she’s done a little bit of everything art related in her career.

Some of that has included work for Atari, various tech start-ups, card art for Wizards of the Coast, album covers for a few musicians and murals for Hollywood Video.

She recalled starting to sell her art when she was 11 while living in Portland, Ore.

Nowadays, when she does art, it’s largely for fun, although she’d had some commission work.

Her husband retired first, so they opted to move from Silicon Valley in California to the Olympic Peninsula to be near her now-late parents, who lived on Marrowstone Island at the time.

Livingstone grew up in southeast Portland, and her father always brought home and played records.

“Dad loved all kinds of albums,” Livingstone said.

That included The Beatles.

“I liked most of the music of the 1960s and ’70s and really had a thing for the Beatles,” she said.

Even decades later, she listens to them daily, and when she feels down, she turns to their music. Some of her favorites are “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!”

Livingstone said she’s had some surgeries and medical setbacks, but she’s had it in the back of her mind to do something with the propane tank on the south side of her house.

“I was tired of looking at the boring, white propane tank,” Livingstone said.

She found inspiration online, where she spotted artists painting propane tanks, particularly recreating The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” following their popular song and movie.

“I still love the movie,” Livingstone said. “It came out when I was a kid.”

However, Livingstone said she wanted to go above what she had seen because other examples had The Beatles – John, Paul, George and Ringo – looking through the submarine’s windows.

So, late last summer, she started poring over a CD insert, the movie and screenshots from online. She spent about two days scrubbing the tank and then used four cans of “Sunshine Yellow” spray paint to cover it.

Livingstone started with painting the four Beatles.

“They looked lonely,” she said, so she added more elements and characters, including the Lord High Mayor and the Blue Meanies.

When she finished the main section of the tank, she wanted more on each end, so she added the Beatles in their alter egos as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Painting took about a month working on and off, mostly in the mornings, as the sun would become too hot to work in, she said.

Livingstone used paint (Model Master and Humbrol) she picked up from Pacific Rim Hobby in Port Angeles.

At the later suggestion of a propane company employee who filled their home’s tank, she purchased and used car wax to cover the tank art. In total, Livingstone estimated it cost her about $100 for supplies.

“I felt happy to be painting again,” she said.

The project isn’t quite done though.

White, more of a movie soundtrack fan, came up with the idea of building the submarine’s periscopes on top of the propane tank, similar to how it looks in the animated movie. He plans to attach multiple pieces of piping to a circular piece of wood with a bag filled with pea gravel tacked on underneath. It will rest atop the tank, and water should run out of the gravel and be easy to move when the tank needs to be refilled, he said.

Livingstone said her time creating movie actors’ cutouts for Hollywood Video inspired her to pursue the idea of creating the four Beatles as jigsaw cutouts to possibly place against her house facing the propane tank.

She said the project reinstated her inspiration.

“We oldies can still do it,” she said.

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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.