Painting flowers. Choosing a background

I often change the background on my floral card designs. I have to make the card eye-catching, so people notice it, and want to buy it!


My floral cards differ from a lot of other botanical designs, Most others are done on a white background, but mine are never on a white background. I love bold contrasting colours, so the background is important too.


Here is a design I did of a red and yellow dahlia. My first one had a striped background. I was not too happy with it. I am sure you will agree!

So, the stripes had to go. I painted over the whole thing with a more uniform area of dots. I thought this looked better, and drew attention back to the flower.

However, I still felt the dots were too dominant, but I liked the overall effect of the colours. I did not feel like repainting it again.  So, the next thing was to scan the work, and put it in to Photoshop. I then softened the dots a bit, using a variety of tools, but mainly the blur tool and the dodge tool. I also darkened up a few bits for contrast, generally at the edge of the petals. 

I still don't think it is perfect!... but it is a great improvement on my first attempt.

Here is the final result.....