You posted to the digital SLR forum, so I guess you want that type of
camera.  Your budget is low for a new one.  Perhaps you could find a used
DLSR such as a Canon 300D?

Used to do this professionally. Don't think you can do this digitally
for $300-400 cameras in this price range just don't make images that
will look professional for copying your paintings. You may want to look
at a film camera for this as most art venues still want slides (then
you can do it for $300-400). One of the important features of a good
camera (slr or dslr) with a macro lens is that the macro lens is flat
field and will show your painting with uniform sharpness. I would
suggest to work digitally get a Nikon D50 or Canon digital rebel and
buy a second hand 50 or 60mm macro lens. Be careful with the evenness
of your light, and critical about the color. For film look at
equivalent camera bodies. The second hand lens route is easier than a
second hand camera, less to go wrong.

Good luck
Tom

I think the best tool for this job would be a scanner.  If you buy a
camera then that's only the beginning.  You're going to need a tripod
and you're going to need lights in order to shoot the work properly.
With a scanner the lighting will always be even and predictable.  You
can even digitize larger works, up to twice the scanner's longest
dimension by doing multiple overlapping scans of the pars of the work
and then using a panorama creation program to stitch the scan files
together.

Within that price range it would be hard to find an unsatisfactory
digital camera these days.  You don't need an SLR, get one of the nifty
point and shoot cameras.  Just make sure it lists macro capability among
its features and that its closest focus distance meets you needs.

But frankly with your budget, I'd get the scanner, forget about the
camera and just use the public resources to get pictures of flowers.
There must be hundreds of thousands of photos of flowers available to
you online, and more sources of photos are available in any good library.

I think you can do all this with an older high end point and shoot.  My
first digital was a Canon G2.  It had all the manual stuff (which you will
need to learn for copying art, you will NOT want to rely on any auto color
balance unless you only paint in black, white and gray.)   the older 4 and 5
mpix models had less noise in the captures than the later 5 to 8mp models,
and you can get them cheap on ebay or craigslist, perhaps some are still in
stock at some retail outlet.  $200 bucks max, there are equivelent models in
nikon and other flavors.   This camera had a decent quality lens, the lens
is a major issue with quality images in digital, enough of an edge to factor
in the decision.  buy a dslr and you either have consumer glass, or spend
1,000 for a pro quality lens.   the g2 has built in good glass (you may have
some barrel distortion at wide angle but that goes away at the prefered
longer end) and clean pixels.

for glare, thats a matter of lighting, not camera.  that's a whole nuther
issue.

you will spend a hundred on a decent tripod.  I suppose the balance will
spent on some lights.

300 pixels per inch is meaningless as it doesn't address the file size.  If
you are saying you need 300 pixels per inch and your art work is a wall
sized painting, you're not going to find a high end professional camera at
$40,000 to do that.

here's a tip, if you need 35mm slides you can send your digital files to
slides.com and they will print hi res images.

Well, an SLR would be out of the question if you're worried about price.
I recommend the Canon PowerShot S2 IS or PowerShot G6. It is about the
$500 range, unless you can find it on sale for $100 less. I don't
recommend the other PowerShots because most of their lenses can't be
changed. I know you said you didn't want to change lenses but if you are
worried about glare, you're going to need a filter and those other
PowerShots will leave you powerless against it. The S2 IS and G6 have a
bayonet ring where you can add a ring so you can put on a filter.