Five-Minute Sketches

Here is a series of quick sketches I did yesterday at lunch time of the Athenaeum in Pasadena. They took about five minutes each. My goal was to  get the essence of the architecture and the trees and make a quick compositional study. I took some reference photos but I am finding that the images I get from my iPhone, while being incredibly detailed and of a high quality, are of such an extreme wide angle view that the subject is sometimes distorted. A quick field sketch lets me see the proportions correctly. I will use my photos for details later, but use these sketches for the overall view. I am trying to use my sketchbook more, and not rely so much on photography. Besides, I really need the practice.