Entrance to the garden, in Land Park
The WPA Rock Garden in Sacramento’s William Land Park is a jewel. I’ve lived in Sacramento for over six years now, and found the garden quite by accident. I’d always assumed that there would be nothing to see there during our hot Sacramento summers. What a pleasant surprise that many plants are in bloom right now! It’s become one of my favorite places to sketch. In fact, I will be teaching a one-day nature-sketching class in the garden in April 2009.
When I visited the garden last month, I intended to do a sketch that would be the centerpiece of my first blog post. Sounds pretty simple, right? I sketched part of a large stonework arbor that I was sitting on at the time, thinking I would color it at home. Here is the sketch:
Pencil sketch of WPA arbor - before
When I looked at the drawing back in my studio, I realized there was a perspective issue with the drawing. Not a huge issue, but it still bothered me. Can you identify it?
(Hint: can you figure out, from the direction of some of the stones, where the eye-line is supposed to be? Do you see any others?)
In a future post I will show you how I fixed the perspective (or at least I think I did!), and then I will show you the final colored version (which I am still working on). I decided to use some new colored pencils I recently purchased (Faber-Castell polychromos) – and I really like them!
The sketchbook is an Aquabee Super Deluxe 6×9, and no, the image isn’t backwards, and I didn’t use the back side of the page. I am left-handed, and I don’t like the spiral edge under my hand while I’m drawing, so I turn the book over.
In the meantime, here are some more photos of the garden:
View of WPA Rock Garden, Land Park
View of cactus, looking east in the WPA Rock Garden
Posted by fieldsketching 
Posted by fieldsketching 
