Every drawing in this shop starts with a photograph I took, standing in the place it shows. The photograph is the record. The drawing is made from it.
One. The photograph
I take the photograph on location. For a building that usually means early, in flat light, standing square to the front. For a bridge or a stretch of coast it means whatever light makes the place look like itself. Sometimes that's the last hour of the day.
I note the date and where I stood, because both change what the drawing can show. Fog rewrites the Sonoma Coast hour to hour. A building that reads clearly in March can disappear behind a full tree by July.
The photograph is the source. It's why the proportions in the drawing are right.
Two. The drawing
Digital tools turn that photograph into a detailed drawing. I decide what stays and what goes, fix what the tools get wrong, and sign the result.
The edits are all subtractions: parked cars, power lines, haze, and the sandwich boards and window posters that change every week. They date the image, and none of them are why anyone remembers the place. I keep the bones of the place: the shape of the arch, the pitch of the roof, the line where the hill meets the sky. A place's identity lives in those shapes, the ones people have walked past for years without noticing.
Sometimes the name is the building. When it is, the name stays, in its own lettering. A marquee without its letters is just a blank box. Murals, logos and other artists' designs belong to the people who made them, so I leave those out.
The test is simple. Does it look right to someone who has stood there?
Three. The watercolor
Some drawings get a second finish. The same tools lay transparent washes over the same lines, in a muted warm palette, with the paper showing through where the light falls. The ink drawing and the watercolor are the same drawing twice. That's why they hang well together.
Four. The print
Everything is printed on demand, one at a time, after you order. Nothing sits in a box waiting. The drawing on a print, a mug or a tote is the same file, sized for the thing it's printed on.
Printing on demand means your order takes a few days longer than something pulled off a shelf. It also means a drawing doesn't have to justify a big print run before it exists. That's why places this small get drawn at all.
Three drawings, start to finish
Arched Rock, Sonoma Coast
The photograph. Arched Rock sits just off the Sonoma Coast near Goat Rock. I took this from the bluff a few minutes before sunset.
The drawing. The arch, the low rocks trailing off to its left, and the break of the water. The horizon is a single line. The photo had a line of birds crossing the sky and a band of haze over the sea. The drawing has neither.
The print. Ink drawing or watercolor, from $30, or framed from $85. The same drawing is also on an 11 oz mug, a tote and an ornament.
St. Teresa of Avila Church, Bodega
I took this standing square to the front of the church on an overcast evening. The drawing keeps the steeple, the lancet windows, the clapboard and the front steps. The house next door and the trees on either side come out. See the St. Teresa of Avila Church print.
Guerneville Bridge, Russian River
Taken from the gravel bar on the Russian River in the last hour of the day. The water was still enough to hold the whole truss. The drawing keeps the truss, the piers, the redwoods and the reflection, and gives the gravel bar the foreground. See the Guerneville Bridge print.
Wondering whether AI is one of the tools? The FAQ answers that directly.
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