The Adobe Wall and Beyond

Adobe Wall Tucson Morning

I was last in Tucson sixteen years ago. I've been yearning to return. I was excited to draw saguaro cactuses and to cast my eyes on a landscape so different from the Midwest.

We stayed for a week in an adobe house. An adobe wall encircled the house and its cactus garden. I loved how that wall defined an intimate space within, while framing the vast desert landscape beyond. It became a new twist on my Inside/Outside exploration. I did this watercolor from the bedroom window, looking north across the Tucson Foothills neighborhood.

The adobe wall was interrupted, as it circled the house, by four blue wooden gates. Below, a mixed media, predominately Neocolor II water soluble wax pastel, in my pocket-size Moleskine. From the front screened porch looking to the side yard and the large mesquite tree outside the gate.  It was late afternoon; I loved how the wall and the dirt of the garden "floor" received the sprawling shadows.

       



Looking over the wall on the other side of the house, two totem pole cactuses, within the wall, frame a neighboring house:

 The same grouping of saguaro cactus pictured in the upper right above is drawn again below, showing its long-dead, nurse tree. To do this one, I sat on my folding stool, outside the wall, my back to the adobe. (I can't keep my hands out of the crayon box.)

Saguaro Family and Nurse Tree

One last one including the adobe wall: an octopus agave with its towering bloom:

To see more of my sketches while in Tucson. Go to my Flickr Photostream Tucson, Arizona set.