Reader…

There's a mountain ebony tree on my neighborhood walking route with Indie in LA — bright fuchsia blooms against a golden concrete wall, almost neon, completely unapologetic. I've been walking by it for months, but it just recently caught my eye because of the bright, vibrant PINK blooms.

I’ve been documenting these walks with my camera for months — that tree, chain-link fences swallowed by vines, sweet potato leaves spilling over curbs, sidewalk cracks laced with fallen leaves where something stubborn and green keeps pushing through.

Extracting colors for the palette. Sketching wild blooms in the margins of my field notes sketchbook.

I knew there was a collection in these walks. I could feel it.

The gap between “I feel something” and “here’s the palette, here are the motifs, here’s the story” used to take me weeks. This time, I tried something different.

I opened Claude, hit voice dictation, and just brain-dumped. No typing. No editing. Just talking about what I’m seeing and what it makes me want to make.

Twenty minutes later, I had a full field notes document — color direction, motif families, trend research, and a gut-check question that made me pause: Does this feel like a collection, or is it still a sketch?

The AI didn’t make a single creative decision. It reflected back what I already knew, pulled in research I hadn’t seen (transformative teal is WGSN’s color of the year, and the New York Botanical Garden’s 2026 orchid show is literally called Concrete Jungle — street art meets floral design), and asked the questions that pushed me deeper.

From there, I built a mood board from my own LA walk photos. Pulled the palette directly from the neighborhood. Ran the brief through AI image generation tools for reference imagery. Then opened Procreate and collaged everything together — AI-generated images layered with my own photographs, assembled by hand.

Every creative decision was mine. The tools served as a digital inspiration board. Artist-led, AI-supported.

The result is Urban Petals: Concrete Bloom — a full handcrafted mixed media paint collection inspired by spring as an act of resistance.

The garden that decided it didn’t need your permission to grow.

URBAN PETALS: Concrete Bloom is here.

I brought the full color story into one box, and it‘s a beautiful and bold handcrafted mixed media collection.

My popular limited edition handcrafted artisanal XL watercolor tile is making a guest appearance for the URBAN PETALS collection.

I've put watercolor production on pause for 2026 — this box includes the only release this year.

Eight hand-poured XL watercolor swatches on a ceramic tile, mixed in my studio from the URBAN PETALS palette: that defiant fuchsia, deep indigo pooling like ink on wet paper, a teal that's half ocean and half oxidized copper.

Colors that feel wild and alive.

This collection grew from my neighborhood walks in LA — months of documenting what happens when spring decides the city is just another surface to grow through.

A peek inside my creative process…

• Inspiration walks photos - took hundreds of photos during my daily walks with Indie
• Voice dictation with Claude — brain-dumped the concept using my custom built Collection Reference Muse {I’ll be sharing a demo about this in Thursday’s YouTube live session}
• Canva — built the mood board and extracted the color palette from inspiration walk photos
• AI tools — generated reference imagery
• Procreate — created a digital mashup collaging everything together for the inspiration board
• Canva — designed the collection graphics
• Claude AI — my daily studio assistant and collaborator editing and refining ideas, color names, creative briefs and more

Artist-led, AI-supported — every creative decision was mine. I'll share the full process story soon.

I’ll be sharing the full behind-the-scenes process — every tool, every step, from voice dictation to final collection graphics

Tomorrow I’m going live on YouTube with a behind-the-scenes look at how I used AI to develop a new paint collection.

I’ll walk through the story and do a live demo of the Collection Research Muse — the tool I custom designed that I use to take a creative spark and turn it into a full collection concept.

​Join me LIVE on YouTube → 🌸

Join me on Thursday 3/26 at 1:00pm PT on YouTube LIVE…to get a BTS peek into the making of the URBAN PETALS collection!

SHOP URBAN PETALS COLLECTION

P.S. The Urban Petals: Concrete Bloom Collector’s Box just launched — only 10 boxes left! [SHOP URBAN PETALS collection] 🌸

With creativity and color...

Artfully, xo Traci Bautista 💞 Founder, #tracibautistaCOLOR

If you have any questions reach out to customer care using the chat box at tracibautistacolor.com