Sketch Crawl X: San Francisco Landmarks

To start the four day Independence Day weekend, I joined a sketching group called Sketch Crawl. These folks meet every other month and sketch all over town. It's international. Click the link to see if there's a group that meets in your area. Here's some watercolor paintings that I came home with:


High on top a hill overlooking the great San Francisco skyline is the Grace Cathedral. The walk to this building is half the fun because in order to get there if you're on foot, you must go up sidewalks so steep that you need handrails. What a workout! Although, when you get to the top, the view is spectular. I tried to start with the basic geometry of the building and get the details as the painting progressed. I ran out of time but got just enough detail of the round stained glass window to move on to the next sketch. Afterwards, I noticed that the sketchy feel of the parts unfinished and without much detail added more to the middle portion of the church.


I painted this from a plaza overlooking Chinatown's "Empress of China Restuarant". I've attended many weddings at this place and everytime I went would say to myself "I've got to paint this one day". Today I did.