Pink Rose 3 with different backround. by Norman Cooper

Again, I preferred the very dark background - the pink, quite a delicate colour, showed up well against it, and does so less effectively in these further paintings: I suppose the complementary of pink is, roughly, green - but that's not going to work with the green leaves: whereas a deep dark, perhaps heavily glazed, would. For this painting, I think I'd try a green blue base, maybe Manganese Blue, glaze over it deeper mixtures, eg the blue plus a red or burnt sienna until I got a very deep dark that was still richer than black, underpaint the leaves and flowers in underpainting white or flake white, and then glaze over the top with a series of reds to get a delicate pink..... mind you, this is all theory! I haven't tried it .... still, and in short, I preferred your very dark background which seemed to set off the soft pink perfectly. Of the two alternatives, I prefer this one to the other - but think you might just crispen up the leaves, add some highlights and deeper darks, because I think the softer background calls for more definition in the subject.

This one is quite wonderful. I usually prefer high contrasts between image and bkg. when I paint florals.

I like this one Norman, but all good.

I too like this one and the very dark one

Thank you Carole and Glennis for your generous comments, and I take Skylars comment on contrasting backrounds, something I must bear in mind for future floral paintings. Thanks also to Robert for all his constructive advice, again something for me to experiment with on future paintings. The rose in my gallery with the very dark green backround was painted using the "Flemish", or 7 layer technique, and here I must confess to having applied only 6 layers, hence the lack of "sharpness" in the image, something else to correct over the coming weeks. I have one last rose painting to post tomorrow which uses a Sienna type backround, which incidently are painted using acrylics, this also applies to the other 2 rose paintings. Many thanks once again.