I've been playing around.  Also, this was tedious and took forever, but it's gorgeous.  Inspired by the way the sunset hits the rocks at the beach, I played around with everything but paint.  This piece is 9 x 12 on board, and I used molding paste to sculpt the rocks.  I then painted them in with ink instead of paint.  Then, I used various artistic papers to collage in the water, and the foam of the waves.  Finally, I used leftover holographic vinyl to catch the light.

Driving back from Tahoe this summer, I decided to do murals in the same general style as my mixed media watercolors.  That means I'd be incorporating three different images into one work.  A few weeks later I went to see the Sequoias with a friend, and am now obsessed with doing a mural-sized triptych.  I'm starting with 6 x 9 watercolors - here's the first one. 

Texture:  The white lines in the painting are roughly inspired by the bark in this photo.

Color:  I used the light hitting this tree for my color inspiration.

Form:  I overlayed a to-scale Sequoia out of cut mulberry paper on top.  This is the most tedious but most satisfying part!  I can't wait to work large.

Mixed media to the max.  One of my favorite things about the Getty Center in Los Angeles is its garden.  Let that sink in a minute, if you know me.  I do not like flowers.  They make me sneeze.  Even when I paint them, I do it in a hurry and then the entire arrangement is banished to the porch.  It's the architecture and sense of space, though, that socks me in the gut in the Getty garden.

The garden architect, Robert Irwin, is (according to the tour) not a plant guy.  He isn't coming at this from a horticulture perspective, but from a fine art perspective of composition - color, texture and line.  His only objective in picking plants was to fit those rules.  I think the garden staff has their hands full keeping it up, but it is definitely worth it, and it changes with the seasons!

One of my favorite things in the garden are the "trees" made out of rebar and capped by bougainvillea.  This is where the chairs are, so they provide much-needed shade.  If you sit below, look up, and squint - this is what you get.

Also, it's almost bokkeh season, so here you are.  This piece is 16 x 20, but I'm making some smaller ones to sell at Jackalope Art Fair in Pasadena in November, stay tuned!  Also, I got to use a champagne cork to trace the circles.  (Ok, it was cava, but still, #artlifegoals.)