Looking through my sketchbooks, I decided to work from a sketch done around 2005 of my garden tulips. I used an archival matboard for the support, instead of watercolor paper. No background was planned initially; I worked with various paper scraps and color shapes to achieve an unusual background. Leaves are at the edges and I decided early on to use a warm red for the center shape behind the tulips to bring the blossoms forward. Some of the green leaf shapes were done adding watercolor pigment very wet over pastels, for a different texture than I usually use.