Wednesday July 1, 2026
Local Color
A while back I picked up a copy of the book Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor, by Point Reyes artist Mimi Robinson. The book describes a practice for developing observational skills in landscape art. Robinson’s idea is to paint in watercolor a swatch chart of the key colors seen at a locality. These color palettes can be simply be a visual record of place, or serve as a starting point for a subsequent painting.
Or perhaps they can be used in photography? One of the things I have become sensitive to after years of practice in mixing watercolors is how inaccurate photographs can be in illustrating the colors of the lightfield at a scene. Sometimes this is a result of colors being out of gamut, but more often this is because the photograph’s color rendering is emphasizing the wrong combination of hues with respect to what catches one’s eye. A usual workflow in art is to take a photograph of a scene to use as a reference for a painting. I’m imagining the opposite workflow — paint a local color palette while at the scene, and then use that palette as a guide to color grading the photograph in editing.
A common practice in editing a photograph is to adjust the colors of the image until it is aesthetically pleasing. But if this is done at some remove from when the photograph was taken, it is easy to forget what the scene felt like visually. The paradox is that the photograph itself does not supply enough information to interpret the color relationships during the editing.
At left is a page from my nature journal from yesterday, where I am starting to explore this concept. At this time of year in our neighborhood, the dominant colors are the intense cobalt blue of the sky, and the yellow greens of the urban forest canopy, primarily sycamores.
Tuesday June 30, 2026
Football Affiliations
It’s complicated. Here are my rules when I’m watching the World Cup (and I watch most of the matches, knitting furiously), in order of importance. (There will be rules conflicts of interest, which get resolved before each match, usually; I don’t normally switch sides halfway through if one side is clearly beating the one I’ve rooted for. Case in point: I wanted Japan to beat Brazil yesterday. They were having an off day, which is fatal in the knockout rounds. But I never stopped hoping they’d somehow draw level and go on to beat the five-time world champions.)
1. Support Spain. Always, no matter what.
2. Support the underdog, unless Spain is playing.
3. Support whoever is playing against the Netherlands. Even when Holland is the underdog.
4. No matter what happens, England will steal defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s the rules. It should make them the perennial underdog, but that’s not how they (or their fans) see it; they feel the cup is theirs by birthright. By this logic, rule #2 doesn’t apply to England.
5. Germany, no matter how badly they are playing, will almost always snag a win at the end. It’s the rules. Which makes any other team the underdog.
6. Support any African team, unless Spain is playing.
7. Support any team that has never won the World Cup, unless it’s the Netherlands.
8. If it’s a France-Brazil final, support Brazil. Sticks in my craw but there we are. This year, they are the underdogs.
Monday June 29, 2026
Backyard Bougainvillea
This sketch is of a small portion of the bougainvillea that is growing on the wall of the garage that borders our backyard. Right next to it is a desert willow that is also in flower; the bougainvillea flowers out-saturate the desert willow ones, though they are about the same hue.
Sunday June 28, 2026
Graphite Exploration
I did this drawing yesterday of ivy stems, decades or even centuries old, around an oak tree in Ireland. It’s a painstaking medium starting with lighter strokes and building up layers, requiring a lot of patience (which I don’t have a lot of) and time (which, given that the workshop was only two hours long, there wasn’t much of either). I regret going in quite so hard at the outset on the cracks in the bark, because they alter the balance of the whole drawing. I’d say this one is about half done.
Saturday June 27, 2026
Urban Tree Sketching
Perhaps I should focus my weekend urban sketches on trees in the urban environment. This sketch is of a couple of trees on the west side of A Street in Davis, drawn from near the Senior Center.
Friday June 26, 2026
New Pen, New Ink
A new TWSBI Diamant fine nib arrived along with a bottle of Sepia DeAtramentis Document ink. I took it out yesterday for a spin.
Thursday June 25, 2026
Sister States
There is a story on the front page of yesterday’s Davis Enterprise with the headline “Catalonia, UC sign agreement on research”. The first sentence of the story reads “In 1986 the Spanish region of Catalonia and the state of California fostered the first agreement between the regions as sister states, recognizing the long relationships of culture, geography and climate that exist between the two regions”.
The story describes a memorandum of understanding between University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Catalan Institute of Water Research (Institut Català de Recerca de l’Aigua) to collaborate on research on sustainable water resource management. The president of the government of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, visited California in May and came to the UC ANR offices in Davis to sign the agreement, which incidentally is where Pica used to work.
I’ve known about the sister state relationship for a while now, and as a Californian this story makes me feel validated to be delving a bit into Catalan culture from afar. Coming in August we will be taking a trip to the region and I will learn much more in person.
It is not too widely known but many of the 18th century Spanish explorers and settlers of California were Catalan. Some of these people include Gaspar de Portolá (from Os de Balaguer — my junior high school was named after him) , Father Junipero Serra (from Mallorca), Juan Crespi (also from Mallorca), Pedro Fages (the first European to climb Mt. Diablo, born in Guissona in Lleida Province), and Pedro Font (drew one of the first maps of San Francisco Bay, born in Girona).
Wednesday June 24, 2026
Oh My Aching Back
In the early 90s I visited a chiropractor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for some problems I was having in my hands and lower back. The impression I had was that it felt better at the time but the effect faded within hours and the whole experience really wasn’t great — it was more about getting people to come back twice a week until the end of time.
I was recently diagnosed with osteopenia, a precursor to osteoporosis, which I’d like to avoid… and I hurt my back about a month ago, moving an armchair from the sidewalk to the house. (Hey, it was for the cats.) Since it was taking so long to heal, I asked for and was given a recommendation to a chiropractor from my massage therapist — if nothing else, I’d love help with my hip.
The guy I saw this morning used to be a respiratory therapist and retrained as a chiropractor in his 50s — it’s a different experience seeing someone who worked for years within the medical system and has moved to a nearby field. Because he’s trained recently, he’s been exposed to more modern thinking on the subject… it was a much better experience, the adjustments were gentle, and I certainly felt better afterwards.
I will report on the long-term success of this adventure but for now I’m hopeful.
Tuesday June 23, 2026
Forty-Three Still At The Ball
In the World Cup we have made it through two of the three sets of group matches — already five of the forty-eight teams have been eliminated from advancing to the knockout stages of the tournament. I will reevaluate whether the expansion to forty-eight teams has been a positive change after it all concludes. The success of the wee island nation-state of Cape Verde (two draws against much stronger teams) has been a delight for all; on the other side of the coin today we got to witness Portugal thrashing Uzbekistan who, like Cape Verde, is also a World Cup debutante. Meanwhile England reverted to form and played to a 0-0 draw today. They are the record holder in 0-0 draws in World Cup matches, with 13.
I would really like to see a team win the World Cup who is not one of the eight who have won it previously. Of the strong candidates under this criterion I am pulling for Japan or Norway. Because the knockout phase starts this time with a round of 32, whoever wins the final will have to win five matches in a row. Chance may play a large factor, especially with the deviltry of penalty shootouts.
Monday June 22, 2026
Graphite
There was a massive thunderstorm in Philadelphia today, which delayed the start of the second half of the France-Iraq match. We decided to walk downtown to the local art store and buy some graphite pencils.
I haven’t spent too much time with graphite, being a damn-the-torpedoes-and-just-draw-it-in-ink kind of gal, but I’ve signed up for a graphite hatching workshop next Saturday. I looked through my supply of pencils and it was pretty paltry: plenty of colored pencils and even watercolor graphite pencils, but few pencils in the graphite ranges on the materials list.
Testing out these Faber-Castells with a quick drawing of my left hand, I realize I have learned something from my colored pencil work — you have to build an image up with layers. Start soft (or hard, in terms of lead) and darken as needed.
This drawing is nowhere near done but I would do shading all over the hand to indicate the contours and light source. I’m looking forward to this workshop.