St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle

I got a call from the Very Rev. Steve Thomason, the Dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, asking if I would paint two or three watercolors of the cathedral for use as gifts for their donors at a fundraising gala next spring. I know Steve from my work in the Diocese, and I was happy to agree.

I went to St. Mark’s, took some photos and made some sketches. The cathedral is essentially a huge cube with big buttresses perched on the top of Capitol Hill overlooking the city of Seattle and Union Bay far below. When I got home, I started working in the studio to develop them into paintings that can be used for reproductions. Here’s what I came up with.

Let me show you the series I made to get to this point. I started by making a small watercolor with ink outlines. This type of watercolor is easy to reproduce and looks pleasant to the eye, but it’s a little tight and cramped for my style.

My vision for this watercolor is to capture the grandeur of the large imposing mass of the cathedral. This is the House of God. So in my next painting I put dark clouds in the background.

I like this, but it’s probably too stark and gloomy for a donor gift. So I tried again in a larger format.

This is pretty good, but the windows need more color in them, and the clouds look muddy. So I tried again, and I was satisfied with my final effort. Here it is again.

I like the tapered mass of the cathedral and the way the clouds loom about the top of the building. The colors are varied, and the figures at the bottom add some life to the painting.

I find that working through a series of paintings like this is helpful. I learn a little each time I make a painting of the subject, and each one gets a little better. It’s a long and painstaking process, but it’s one way to make some improvement.