Bringing in the Harvest

There are some ref photos that really jump out at you.  Just asking to be painted.  The source picture for this particular painting did just that.
The photographer was Diane Fletcher and the picture appeared on the Paint my Photo website http://www.paintmyphoto,ning.com/  I love the Olde World feel to this picture.  We are transported back to a bygone age when life was simple but the work was hard.  Even though this painting is too small to show individual features, you have the feeling that the family may be smiling.
Initially the painting had no background colour, and something didn't seem just right.  The first watercolour that came to my hand was a tube of Viridian.  I immediately threw it back in the box - then had second thoughts.  I turned the paper upsidedown, moistened all the area above the heads and dropped the strong green colour in.  I have to say that I wasn't sure at first, but now I like it. 
When preparing the finished photograph for posting on PMP, I decided to have fun and play around with the colour balance.  I ended up with a nice sepia version of the image.
The sepia vesion got me to thinking about using coffee as a painting medium.  So now you can see there is a direct link between this Harvest painting and the Coffee man in my last blog.
Funny the way things work out.