Santa Clara University- Mission Santa Clara de Asís

Californian Mission Bell

 It's been 7 months since I left Seattle and I finally got back to an Urban Sketchers' outing today with South Bay USK. The location was at Mission Santa Clara de Asis, one of the Hwy 101 missions. I learnt about the Hwy 101 missions from a friend who grew up in Los Angeles. Therefore when I saw the post about the outing, I told James that I had to go. 

There was an instructor talking about principles of perspective at the beginning of sketch session today so I spent a bit of time trying to get my perspective right. I omitted quite a lot of details in the background, including the church connected to the tower because I was more interested in the Mission Bell. The perspective didn't bother me too much but I had some trouble with the shadows on the building. I'm still trying to figure out how to mix the shadow color instead of just glaze over the first wash with gray.

Later I moved to another shady spot and noticed this woman kneeling in front of the statue of Jesus. I decided to capture the atmosphere between her and the statue. This sketch was done within 15 minutes.

By the time I packed up my gear, I suddenly realized that I was not with USK Seattle so I should have gone back for the throw-down 20 minutes ago (12pm)! Luckily most of the sketchers were still at the meeting spot and I got to see some of their sketches, but I didn't have time to talk with them. Oh well, maybe next time.