It’s No Secret

I just finished one of my Surprise Christmas Commissions and am ready to start on a piece that’s not Top Secret. This is for a very special collector who has followed my career since I was painting horses. After we visited about her various desires I emailed the sketch above.

Kenna said she loved what I had done but asked if I could make a few changes. I said “Absolutely”. She told me a wonderful memory of staying with her grandmother when she was a young girl. She was allowed to pick her choice from her grandmother’s luscious flower beds to make a personal bouquet to decorate the room she stayed in. Kenna loves Zinnias and sent a picture of her sister in front of one of the colorful beds from her grandmother’s home. So we just pulled out the Salvia and added Zinnias. Because the Zinnias are oranges and pinks I changed the orange California Poppies to red Geraniums and the flowers in the pot on the window sill to Lavender. Then Kenna went back through all of my blogs and decided she liked the red window in “A Blaze of Color”, the floor in “Golden Adobe” and the rock wall like our home! She also requested I make all of the terra-cotta flower pots round.

The basic elements are sketched on the canvas with a thin mixture of MUD (Ultramarine Blue + Alizarin Crimson) + Liquin. I label the flowers so I won’t forget the changes we made. Now we’re ready to start painting. Please come back to watch. Hugs, Mikki Senkarik

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