What is the particular hue of the mist that hovers over the Point Reyes Peninsula? What are the numerous shades of green the sunlight reveals on a leaf of coast live oak or a tendril of lichen? Mimi Robertson, in her new book, “Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor,” shares color palettes she has saved from studies on the Marin coast and around the world. Ms. Robinson started creating them after she realized how much she savored simply matching her watercolors to her subjects or landscapes, and she uses the palettes as a “visual form of journal keeping” as well as to prepare for plein air painting sessions. For the seashore, which the Petaluma resident considers “her backyard,” the book documents the color of fog amid trees, cliffs during sunset, rain, red-winged blackbirds, Douglas irises and more. “By observing color,” she writes of Point Reyes, “I have developed a deeper appreciation for the ecology, the local plant life, and the windswept trees, along with the animal and plant life.” The forest, she notes, chartreuse and neon-green in the wet spring, gives way to ochre-tinged green and russet brown in the fall. She shares palettes from beyond Point Reyes, too, from the East Coast and countries near and far: her grandmother’s farm in Pennsylvania, Guatemala, Mexico, the pyramids of Egypt, the Dead Sea and Kyrgyzstan, to name a few. The book, aside from chronicling her colorful travels, is a guide for those who want to make their own palettes, with chapters on preparation and techniques, observation (“find a small object”—a rock, a shell, a flower—“and explore all the notes of color,” she suggests), field studies and color mixing. But even for the artistically inept, the palettes are a moving deconstruction of place into paint. Point Reyes Books will host free a talk and book signing with Ms. Robinson at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 11 at the Point Reyes Presbyterian Church.