Flowers are a great inspiration for me, and I cut and arrange many bouquets from my garden. I favor large flowers and their bold colors. This piece includes fuchsia zinnias and golden sunflowers in one of my special vases.

My main objective is a pleasing design combined with saturated pigments. I use lots of water and usually begin by painting individual shapes with large brushes with plain water and then dipping into the wet shapes with fresh pigments. I continue painting, allowing the pigments to blend and run on the paper. This creates many unusual and delightful color combinations that cannot be achieved by mixing colors on the palette.

I also keep an eye on the values and shapes as I paint, making the necessary connections to neighboring floral shapes. I also added some Daniel Smith watercolor ground to the background before painting which adds some texture underneath parts of the composition.