Hello friends,

Last week I stood at the edge of the Pacific with my daughter, watching the sky give up its color in long, slow bands — and then, further out past the swell, a pair of humpbacks surfaced and breached, more than once, oblivious to our existence, perhaps a mother and a daughter themselves. Being there, with her, watching that — I am so grateful..

I didn't know it yet, but that evening was about to decide a whole collection.

The newsletter version of this story moves fast: three pigments make a grey, then a palette. Here's the slower version. I started with just three — Naples Yellow, Indanthrene Blue, and Light Red, all Windsor & Newton — because I wanted every color in Small Light to come from the same small family, the way the colors in that sunset were related to each other.

So before I trusted the palette with anything real, I spent an afternoon just testing it against itself. Small swatches, one grid at a time, seeing what the three pigments would do when I pushed them toward warm, toward cool, toward grey.

A few rounds in, I started blending the three together until I landed on a perfect muted dark grey — the kind of grey that doesn't read as "mixed" so much as "found." Once I had it, I added a touch of that grey into each of my base colors, to unify the palette before I built anything else out of it. From there, I created secondary and complementary colors, adding a bit of white to each one — not traditional in watercolor, but it gives the colors a smoother quality that's easier to blend on paper. That one small decision is probably the most technical thing I'll tell you about this collection, and also the thing I'm most sure of.

This is where it landed — not a test anymore, but the actual mix I'd be painting this entire collection with.

Once the palette earned my trust, I let it loose on something closer to the real thing — small landscape studies, taped off in a grid, each one a miniature test of how these colors would actually behave as water and sky and light instead of just chips of paint sitting next to each other. This is the stage where a palette either holds together as a world or falls apart into a pile of colors that happen to be in the same room. This one held.

Once the color story was settled, the physical prep began — the unglamorous and mundane: marking the exact dimensions onto each precut sheet, so I know exactly where to tape it off before a single brushstroke happens. It matters more than it looks like it should. It's what gives each finished piece a crisp, clean edge fitting neatly just under the mat, instead of a ragged one sticking out from under the frame. Possibly the part that proves how much thought actually goes into a collection before it's a collection — nobody sees it, and it's the reason everything after it looks intentional. Every sheet of paper this collection will need has been measured and set aside, with a few extra cut on purpose, because Small Light is the kind of project where I'd rather have more paper than I need, than run out mid-collection and have to start matching a mood I've already moved past.

By the end of that week, two things were accomplished: the color story was locked in, and the first two paintings existed — small, and both drawn directly from that sunset. And the newsletter and this blog were created!

I'm not ready to show you the whole of either piece yet — that's still coming, closer to December — so what you're seeing above are just a few details instead: texture, an edge, the way the paint settled. But I wanted you to see this part too, the part most people don't get to.

I'll keep sharing pieces of this process as the collection comes together — not all at once, just as things happen, the way this did.

Thank you for being here for it, however it unfolds.

Natalia

Hello friends,

I went looking through older work this week — further back than I usually look — and found a piece from a short trip to the Baja coast that I almost forgot I'd painted.

It's not how I usually work. The paint is layered on thicker, closer to gouache than the watercolor I'm known for, and I'd set it aside without quite knowing what to make of it. Looking at it again now, I think I know why I kept it instead of giving it away: it doesn't look like anything else I've made, and it still holds the exact weight of that evening.

FROM THE STUDIO

I remember the trip more than I remember deciding to paint this. A short stretch of Baja coastline, the kind of surf that announces itself before you can see it, and a sunset that didn't fade so much as get heavier — more pink, more gold, more everything, right up until it wasn't.

Normally I'd thin my pigment and let the paper do most of the work — water finding its own path, color settling where it wants to. Here I did the opposite. I built the paint up in layers, thick and deliberate, the way you'd work in gouache rather than watercolor. It's a slower, more stubborn way to paint water. But it's also the only way I could get the light to feel as alive as it did standing there, and the waves to carry the kind of weight they actually had — not a suggestion of power, but the thing itself.

A CLOSER LOOK

Two waves cresting against a line of mountains, the sky behind them doing most of the emotional work — cream and blush and a streak of violet, the kind of color you only get in the last few minutes before dark. The horizon is a thin, almost severe line of deep blue-black, which is what lets the sky and the waves feel as large as they do.

The technical choice that mattered most here is one most people wouldn't clock looking at it: the white of the foam isn't left-bare paper the way I'd normally handle it. It's built — layered pigment pulled back and reworked until it reads as light rather than absence. That's the gouache logic again. Nothing in this piece is really "empty." Even the lightest passages have weight.

AN INVITATION

This one has already found its frame — a vintage wood frame, matted, 14.25" wide by 17.25" tall by 1.5" deep, holding an 8x10 original on 100% cotton watercolor paper. It's a beautiful object on its own, independent of the wall it ends up on.

Watercolor and gouache on 100% cotton paper, 8x10 (framed 14.25 x 17.25 x 1.5)

I don't often bring older pieces back out like this, but some paintings are worth a second look — and this one is ready for its forever home. If it speaks to you, reach out here — I'd love to talk about finding it a home.

This is the first of a few pieces I'll be bringing back into the light before Small Light opens in December.