Zinnia Zinger is a small acrylic painting that provides a big burst of color. This electric pink zinnia came from my garden. As I "sketched" out the piece on my small canvas board, I used a red wash for the background. I tend to use a contrasting color for my underpainting, and I intended to fill in the zinnia's foliage after completing the flower head. But once I painted in the hot pink zinnia, I decided the red was powerful. I elected to keep the red background.

There's an artistic term for just this kind of thing—the fallacy of intent. Sometimes it occurs when you drop your paintbrush on your canvas, but realize the accidental stroke is good. Or when your husbands spill his beer on your ink drawing, but the running ink does something exciting to the piece. Or you dip your brush into the wrong color, but you end up liking the unplanned change.

Zinnia Zinger was a piece that provided me with an idea for a new way of presenting a subject.

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