This piece, painted as a Christmas gift to my newlywed sister-in-law and her husband, developed from a plein air watercolor sketch, to a 5×7 and then to a larger format finished watercolor painting.
The plein air sketch was done on location during the couple’s wedding weekend. We drove from the Hendersonville area to a nearby state park in the Blue Ridge Mountains on a perfect day in October – peak fall foliage on full display. My sister-in-law and her husband wanted to take us hiking to the place where he proposed, on the overlook trail at Triple Falls. Everyone went along, baby included! She rested after a diaper change while I worked up a quick sketchbook painting. A passerby reminisced with me about her own mother doing similar things when she was a little girl.
I completed the painting in the studio and at home, and it is now happily hanging on the wall at my sister-in-law’s home.