Blessed Sacrament Church



9/25/12 Lamy fountain pen, watercolor, Hand Book sketchbook

Whenever I drive south on I-5 from my house, I see two church steeples just east of the freeway near the University District. On my way home from an errand yesterday, I took a quick detour to sketch one – the Blessed Sacrament Church, a Seattle historic landmark on Northeast 50^th and Eighth Avenue Northeast.

 

According to the church’s website, it is undergoing extensive restoration after severe earthquake damage in 2001. I knew the whole building would be too big a bite for me to chew in my short time between errands, so I decided to sketch only the part that I see so often from the freeway. As it turned out, that was too big a bite for me, too. All those buttresses, niches, parapet copings and medallions were overwhelming.

 

But two good things came of attempting this sketch:

1.      I learned a bunch of architectural terms like buttress, niche, parapet coping and medallion.

2.      A couple of months ago, I not only would not have stopped to sketch this church – I would have run, screaming, in the opposite direction.

 

HA! Take that, former Fear of Sketching Architecture!