how-to of the day – making silk paper – playing with the background colors

I’ve decided that I want to mount the canvas onto a piece of cotton, before it’s stretched onto stretcher bars (or cheat, and just use a pre-stretched canvas from an art store) But what color to use for the background?

I quite like the way it looks on black – it’s clean, simple and doesn’t add any extra clutter:

But how about red? I pulled out my trusty photo editing software and started playing.

I think the red is a little too much – it’s overwhelming everything else… green perhaps?

I’m still not thrilled with it – but there’s purple in the flowers & stripes, how about a really dark eggplant?

I think it’s a tie between the purple and the black. By playing around with different colors, you can see what’s going to work best. It will also show you how different colors affect the piece – there’s such a dramatic change with every change of the background.

all images: C Findlay-Harder