- Learn to observe, sketch, and paint nature from an award-winning outdoor artist and art teacher - Explains how to “see” color depending on time of day, season, atmosphere, and more - More than 170 illustrations, featuring iconic national parks - Improve your nature painting skills or learn a fun new hobby you can do outdoors Colors of the West explores wild places through the lens of watercolor “en plein air” painting, a French term meaning literally “in the open air.” Steeped in the natural world, award-winning artist Molly Hashimoto has sketched in the outdoors and worked as a plein air artist and teacher for more than 20 years. In that time she has filled more than 40 sketchbooks with landscapes, vignettes, studies of flora and fauna, and natural history notes—all created while visiting some of the West’s most stunning landscapes.