The first thing to know about Mike Pease’s art is how incredibly precise his process is for producing it. 

Pease creates his careful landscapes, rendered with photographic precision in colored pencil, by layering in one color at a time, working with only three different hues: magenta, blue and yellow. In general, he lays down the blue layer first, followed by magenta and then highlighted with yellows. This minimalist, almost mechanical approach results in lush, realistic images of scenes in and around the Willamette Valley that combine the slightly desaturated look of watercolor — a medium he also uses for other work — with the mechanically transformed look that comes with fine printmaking.

You can see the results of this patient and painstaking — or is it obsessive? — approach to art in a show that runs through Nov. 16 at White Lotus Gallery in Eugene. Good Places: Drawings and Watercolors by Mike Pease includes some two dozen large and small works in both mediums, though the show is dominated by the colored pencil work he is known for.

Seen from a slight distance, Pease’s colored pencil landscapes are reminiscent of another White Lotus artist, Margaret Prentice, who does similarly photorealistic Willamette Valley scenes in oil on canvas. The western Oregon countryside is a very green experience, at least in the summer, and it seems almost miraculous that anyone could capture that greenery using three colored pencils, none of which is actually green.

Pease’s other career has been in architecture. He used drawing to record spaces while studying architecture at University of California, Berkeley, and began creating and showing his unusual landscape work nationally in the 1980s. Around the turn of the millennium, Pease felt burned out and, realizing he didn’t need the income from selling art, cut down on the many studio hours it takes to make his drawings.

That lasted only briefly, he told me in a 2005 interview. “I realized after several months of that — of not working — that I was itching to work again. I realized art was important for me personally, not just professionally.” 

As you can see in the White Lotus show, Pease’s artistic subject isn’t specific things or individuals; it’s the sense of place that you experience in the outdoors or, occasionally, in the city. He is an artist of atmosphere and mood more than geography and documentation. As the title of the show suggests, his work best evokes a clear, strong sense of place. 

Good Places: Drawings and Watercolors by Mike Pease runs through Nov. 16 at White Lotus Gallery, 767 Willamette Street. Hours are 10 am to 4 pm Tuesday through Saturday. See more information at WLotus.com.