Weird hybrid

I'm almost out of white acrylic paint, which is the essential color when making a portrait, both for mixing and for highlighting; so while I wait for my order from Dick Blick to arrive, I decided to do a weird hybrid picture that is part ink and part paint and not a portrait. World Watercolor Group is doing an August challenge and, while I'm not doing it, today's prompt was "vase" and I just happened to have one with some of my zinnias and marigolds and coreopsis and lemon verbena stuffed in it, so here it is.

I did the background by rolling and then dribbling all the colors of the flowers into the background; I let it dry, then I did my drawing, and painted the flowers with ink while I did the vase in acrylics. The acrylics suit the slightly powdery glazed ceramic of the vase, while the ink goes better with the ephemeral nature of cut flowers. Or some such existential shit like that. If it has to be a practical failure, at least it can be a philosophical success, right? Ha ha ha!

"Zinnias in a vase"—Daler Rowney inks, pencil, Uniball pen, acrylics, Stabilo, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.