Sabino Canyon walk and draw

On a day off between workshops in Tucson, we took a drive to see the popular Sabino Canyon. There’s a shuttle you can take to the top, and since we had no idea how difficult the climb would be, we took it. In hindsight, we could easily have walked it since it’s a paved road all the way up. But we did walk down, and I stopped to draw (in ink) along the way.

During my short drawing stops, I tried to capture the distinct characteristics of the landscape — the steep cliffs, the Saguaros clinging to the hills, the winding stream and rocks — as well as a few features of the park such as the stone bridges and the Sabino dam. Each of these scribbles took no more than 5 minutes.

Back at the ranch I added colour to my sketches, as well as a few notes about each location, including one about a place where, from my spot on the shuttle, I caught sight of another sketcher. I was hoping to run into him again on the walk down but he was gone by the time we arrived there. I drew his view anyway.