"Now Showing" is one of the few floral paintings that I tackle every once in a while as a change of pace from my usual still life set ups.  When I am inspired by especially beautiful flowers, I can't resist capturing them on paper or canvas.  With flowers, I have my choice of using oils, pastels, or colored pencils.  This time I chose pastels.  These azaleas were solid white - so the challenge I faced was to depict them with gentle tints of color (mostly lavenders, blues, pinks, and yellows) and to save the white for areas that I really wanted to pop.  Painting them all white would have been bland and boring, therefore the trick was to use just enough color so that they read as white, as opposed to lavender flowers.