Painting Irises en Plein Air

One of the benefits of painting with artists with experience is learning from them. Take these Irises for example. I decided to paint this clump of Irises that were out in the yard of Marsha's cabin. My intention was to make the flowers stand out and blur the background. Well I painted the background a yellowy green...because that is how I saw it. The flowers just seemed to fade away though. Then one of the other artists painted another clump of Irises and she made the background yellow. Her flowers just popped right off the canvas! Why didn't I think of that!!! I forgot that I am the artist and I can change things to make the painting work. I guess that's part of the learning process. So when I came home, I took some yellow pastels and changed my background just to see if it would work...and I think it looks much better. So thanks to Ginny for reminding me that I do have artistic license!