David O'Hara

I fear that having taken up sketching and watercolor painting I might soon find myself making woodcuts and prints.

I started off in the arts innocently, with music and prose. Music theory seemed a bulwark against anything too squishy.

I admit I slipped into poetry for a few decades, but I meant well. (I still dabble, but I can quit anytime I want.)

Then I found sketchbooks and watercolor paint. It seemed so innocent. So help me, I never meant to spend this much on pens.

I hope this never winds up in acrylics.

Little by little my students and I are trying to turn our university campus into a living laboratory.

arcg.is/941Cm

Something I wrote recently about how important it is to treat others justly when we are in power.

I have been leading a discussion on the Peloponnesian War for several years now. Here is a tidbit from that:

open.substack.com/pub/david…

I publish in a lot of places and don’t always remember to cross-post. Apologies for that.

This morning’s bird.

Early this morning I dropped off a colleague at the airport. He’s about to teach a watercolor painting class abroad with a bunch of our students.

Before leaving my house to pick him up I decided to do a quick sketch of a bald eagle I saw down by the river in Sioux Falls a few days ago.

Pencil sketch for volume and shape, fudenosuke pen for darker outline, Tombow brush pens for color and shading.

Letting my day begin with wonder.

When I’m not teaching, I’m trying to learn more.

When I am learning, I’m becoming a better teacher.

And I’m learning for its own sake, which is a good and joyful thing.

Studies in a red-breasted nuthatch that visited our home last month. I began with an impression in watercolor to get a sense of volume and value and color. Then a more detailed sketch with color to consider the structure of the bird, its posture, and its behavior.

Then the questions that arose from observation and that lead to wonder.

“The love of wisdom begins in wonder.” —Aristotle

Morning practice. Little by little I’d like to sketch and paint all the wildlife on my university campus. Most of it goes unnoticed, even the large animals like deer and turkeys that sometimes wander through at night.

Watercolors are fairly new to me and I’m having fun exploring how to use them to express volume and gesture and shape with a minimum of color and of brushstrokes. Such a meditative practice.

This morning my wife pointed out a belted kingfisher down by the river. It was perched over one of the few places where the water is not covered with ice. I snapped a few photos, then inched closer, snapped a few more photos, and moved closer again. Now at home I’m studying the kingfisher in a way I have never been able to do when watching them in the wild. They tend to be elusive, and to move away fast when I approach. Here are three studies I’ve done today, in different media: ink, watercolor, and pencil.

The most vibrant one, done in colored pencil, is in the book I am handwriting for my infant grandson.

Kingfisher.

We saw this on our walk down by the river this morning. There is not a lot of open water, so it sat still for a long time over a place where the water was not frozen, giving me time to approach slowly for photos. Normally they’re not this willing to put up with company.

I read the morning news during breakfast, and I read some of what St John wrote on Patmos after that.

And then I spent time journaling, which feels very small but also very important.

And after writing five or six pages, I found myself thinking of the cardinal I saw in a small tree yesterday down by the river, puffed up against the cold, and placidly meeting my gaze as I stood on the trail ten feet away.

So I decided to end my journal entry with a sketch of that cardinal, with its calm gaze and its small part of the world. And now as I post this here I am thinking of Wendell Berry’s wise poem, The Peace of Wild Things.

Went for a walk down by the river this morning and saw this large bald eagle fly past me and then perch in the tree across the river from me.

At this time of year we get lots of eagles perched in the trees by the river since most of the lakes and ponds are covered with ice. The river is one of the few places where they can still catch fish.

Female wood duck. Still working on proportions. Fun practice!

New year, new bird. I’ve photographed many animals on my campus over the years.

Today’s sketch is part of a project to sketch and paint all the wildlife I’ve seen on my campus. Maybe I’ll make it into a poster, or a field guide.

This is also a project in getting a little better at my art every day, and getting a little better at ecology every day as well.

If I can make even tiny improvements in each of these on a daily basis, imagine what I can do in a year.

One of my faculty in grad school reminded us all: a dissertation seems daunting, but if you write just one page every day for a year, you’ll write it all.

Very often kind colleagues, friends, and family members will send me a text or an email with a link to something they found interesting.

A news article, a Substack, a YouTube video, a book they enjoyed.

I love it when they reach out to share something wonderful they’ve found.

One of them, a close friend from college, will often share a short passage from a book he is reading, or will send me a lecture on mathematics, architecture, classics, or some other topic we both enjoy learning about.

And he does it right : he always sends me a short passage from the book, or he will say something like “this lecture connects to the topic we discussed on the phone last week, especially starting about ten minutes in.”

He’s a busy man, so when he takes those extra few seconds to tell me why he was interested in this book or video, his text or email comes as a double gift: he is giving me something he found, and he is giving me a little of his precious time as well.

That is pure gold.

When someone just sends me a link, with nothing to explain it, I read the URL and then delete the email.

“Huh,” I say. “I guess Jane liked something at that link.”

And now I know a tiny bit more about Jane.

But I know nothing about the link, because I never clicked on it.

If Jane didn’t have time to tell me why she liked it, it must not have been worth much to her.

I take that as a sign that it’s not worth much to me, either. There are a lot of URLs out there, and I can’t click them all.

So I look at the link, and then I delete the email.

Sometimes that feels a little rude, but just as my busy friend’s time is precious, so is mine.

After all, I have to go through a LOT of cybersecurity training each year, and my own university sends me phishing emails on a regular basis. If I were to fail one of those test emails, I’d have to repeat the training, and that means an hour or several hours of my precious time. It’s not worth it. So I don’t click links in emails without VERY good reason. Even if I hover over the bright blue hyperlink and see that the link looks clean, I rarely click it. If it matters a lot, I might search for what the link purports to show me. Otherwise, it goes into the trash.

So if you find something cool and want to share it with me, great! I’m so grateful that you thought of me! Now take some time to tell me why you thought of me. If you summarize what you found, you might find that you understand what you read or saw even better by summarizing it, and I get the advantage of reading something you wrote rather than something written by a stranger. What a gift!

Better still, don’t just summarize it, but tell me more about us. Why did it remind you of me? Was it that conversation we had about a similar subject while we were hiking together? Was it the thing you told me about that your daughter learned in school and that made you so proud? I’d love to hear about that, and to share your pride!

If you just have time to send me a PDF, or a screenshot, or a hyperlink, thanks! _I’m honored that you thought of me. _

Just bear in mind that the next time you see me at the coffeeshop, if you ask me “What did you think about that link I sent you?” I will likely reply with something like “Remind me why it mattered to you.”

If you don’t recall what you sent, or why you sent it, and can’t tell me in your own words, I hope you’ll forgive me if I also don’t remember.

Meanwhile, keep reading and learning, and when you find good things, keep sharing them with people who will benefit from them.

If at all possible, take the time to write your own short essay about what you learned, and why it mattered to you.

That will be a far greater gift, and even if you don’t think you’re a good writer, I assure you that your personal essay will be more welcome than the words of a stranger. If there’s something I need clarified, we can meet for coffee and have a conversation about it.

Wouldn’t that be good?

A study in color and detail of two birds I can find not too far from where I live. One of them, the mountain bluebird, I usually find only in western South Dakota. The blue jay I usually only see in the eastern part of the state.

Both present good challenges for me as I work at improving my observation skills, my sketching, and my use of watercolors.

And both are beautiful to observe in the wild.

Do yourself a favor and memorize something beautiful in 2026.

Even better: make it something exceptionally beautiful, maybe even so beautiful that despite its apparent uselessness countless generations have received it as a heritage and shared it with those they love.

This one is a white-breasted nuthatch I photographed in the Good Earth State Park near Sioux Falls two years ago. I figured it would be interesting to paint two species in the same day so I could see their similarities and differences. Sketching and painting helps me remember species, and it helps me teach them to my students as well.

The other day a visiting alum asked me about my nature journaling practice. I told him about the Wild Wonder Foundation workshop I participated in last summer.

John Muir Laws is an amazing teacher, and all semester I have been teaching my students what I learned from him, including quick ways of sketching birds.

So I asked my alum to show me a picture of any bird and told him I could teach him to sketch it in under a minute. Then I did so.

A little while ago one of the same species made a rare appearance at the feeder outside my kitchen window so I made a quick sketch next to the one I made for my alum.

And then I decided to paint it, which took more like half an hour.

I’m pretty pleased with the whole process, but especially with the teaching and the birding!

(Update: see my next post for more nuthatch art!)

Even the furricane rests sometimes. He has had a busy morning being climbed on by my granddaughter. Both of them seemed happy with the play, and both are now sleeping.

South Dakota

This morning I had breakfast with an alum who is in grad school. He loves his studies but is also weary of political news. He is a gifted artist so I encouraged him to allow himself to see the local. Attend to the person in front of him, care for his neighbor, delight in what is nearby, and allow that delight to turn into gratitude and loving kindness. The small decisions can make a world of difference. In a way, the whole world is present in that one person, and love is not wasted on them, even if it might seem a squandering of effort to those who wish only to make big changes in the world. I came home and added a small scene to my sketchbook, choosing to attend to this small winter scene in my driveway. As I clear the snow from the sidewalk, I clear it for I know not who will walk there next. They are also worth loving.