I was going to share a different blog with you today, but the other day I painted the view from my desk and I happened to take photos at each stage of the process so I wanted to share it with you. It's a view that I feel incredibly privileged to wake up to every day and I often do little sketches or quick paintings of it. It's the northern end of the Santa Lucia Range, and at the top of the furthest peaks you can see sparse trees, burned in the 2016 Soberanes fire.

I’ve recently started using phenology wheels to make small daily observations and watercolor paintings. Today I'm sharing how to make your own wheel, along with some of the history and significance behind them. I love the practice of pulling out my watercolor paints for a few minutes each evening to capture what I noticed that day.

There’s lots of talk about nature journaling being accessible— you can do it wherever, whenever, whoever you are— but in actual practice, it can be difficult to figure out how to make it accessible for chronic pain, illness, and other disabilities. If you’ve struggled to make it work for you, know that you aren’t alone.

Today I’m going to take you through the process of making the first painting in the series, titled Intersections of Land and Sea.

Recently I’ve found myself enjoying the process of making art more than I have in a while, and when I sat down to think about why that was, it occurred to me that slowing down had a big role in the renewed joy I was feeling when creating.