03/08/2025
Zinnia, watercolour, full sheet. I seldom paint red flowers, but I wanted to capture the personality of the zinnia, with its in-your-face, unabashedly joyful exuberance. Zinnias come in a wide variety of hot colours: pinks, oranges, yellows, and reds, and they love the heat. In this painting I experimented with red against red, varying the background colour to range from orange to red to pink and magenta, with some cool greens and blues for relief. The various warm colours suggest flowers in the background. I also wanted to make the most of the contrasting creams and darks in the flower center, with their little swirly gold tendrils, and the bursts of buttery yellow from the undersides of the young petals. All these contrasts of colours and textures keep pulling the eye back to the center of the painting. "Zinnia" was accepted for the prestigious Splash 17 book, subtitled The Best of Watercolor. I have both Press Prints and Giclees of this image. Check out the Prints page of my website, www.marneyward.com
