Zinnias oil painting demo

One of my secret hobbies is choosing colors, whether for my own home or for a friend. It's a job that I enjoy, and often get asked to do, and I love choosing colors that don't have name. You know, that perfect shade of taupey grey with just a tiny hint of cool blue. There is no color that is anywhere near it in the crayon box with all of the fun color names.

And it definitely applies to mixing colors for a painting, like this greenish pink in these gorgeous zinnias. So I did some research about those colors. Te ROY G. BIV spectrum doesn't actually do a great job of describing the wavelengths, intensities, and saturations that the human eye perceives. It actually limits the way humans talk about color, and therefore the ways they use it. Identifying color in an everyday sense is like having a finite number of crayons, and no one likes having a finite box of crayons, right? You can find out more about this in the link below.

Anyway, these colors feel a bit nostalgic, a bit 60's and oh so much fun! I painted this live on my Wednesday morning Instagram live where you can join me each week at 8am, (EST). You can see this painting come to life in the link below just in case you missed it. Enjoy!