Palm Canyon Design

The Palm Canyon landscape art quilt shown on my previous post was commissioned by a woman very familiar with the location. She rides her horse into this canyon and finds a wonderful sense of peace and solitude. There are specific features in this area that she wanted in the art quilt, such as the waterfall, palm trees, hillsides, rock formations, etc. She is also a geologist and wanted a cross-section of the the subsurface to be depicted. In particular she wanted some of the rock folding and faults to be included.

She sent me a link to a college geology Professors website that was very helpful. I went back to school a bit to figure that aspect of this quilt out. Having previously worked in the environmental field was also very helpful! This is a photo of a road cut in the area that shows the folding and bending of the soil layers that has occurred. I can see great design lines in this photo!

I have been to the Palm Canyon area and had an idea of what the area  looks like, but I did some Internet research to get some reference photos for the design.  These are some photos of the Palm and Indian Canyon areas that I found on the Internet that helped me figure out how to depict the important features for this quilt.

This is a photo showing my messy design process. I go through several sketches when I do a design, refining again and again until I come up with my final plan.

And this is the final design. It includes the oasis, waterfall, palms, trail, rolling hills, jutting rocks and other features that this area is known for. The subsurface also shows folding of the rocks and soil layers that has occurred over the eons of time, and some faults. The drawing got the "okey dokey" from the client, so now its on to the color plan. That will be the subject of my next post.

Thanks for visiting my blog!