I've taken lots of photos of Sanitas Valley as I come here often because its pretty close to where I live. Here in Colorado, there are infinite places to hike around and to challenge yourself going up all the high peaks. I often like to take the more relaxing path, one like this where I can simply enjoy something beautiful while taking an easy morning stroll taking in a familiar view which I've really grown to love in all seasons and all times of day. This is the photo I chose to base the composition for my mosaic rendition.
Above is the charcoal pencil sketch I created for the Sanitas Valley mosaic series. This black and white sketch isn't only the basis for my latest mosaic "Sanitas Valley - Spring" but it will also be used to create a winter, fall and summer version, maybe even a night time scene with as starry night sky.
![]()
Sanitas Valley is a pleasant and rewarding trail between the the Hogback Ridge and Mount Sanitas with a perfect view of Green mountain which is one of the high peaks here in Boulder. It is one of my favorite trails here in town and I visit it often. From the first stroll down this path, I knew I either wanted to draw this place or to create a mosaic tribute to it. I've walked here during every season and decided that I wanted to recreate the spring version first. Day after day I went in spring, waiting to see an abundance of purple flowers ... I had no luck, maybe bad timing. I saw lots and lots of yellows =) So I reluctantly decided to go with the yellow flower fields as seen in my sketch above.
Once I had all my concepts ready, I printed out an enlarged version of my sketch. Once all pieced together, this is where I arrange all my glass - its a map of sorts.
Little did I know that this mosaic was meant to be purple from the start. When I started laying out my color palette in glass, yellow just didn't make any sense so I decided to wing it and started pulling out my purples. I took a deep breath and began to create the spring version of Sanitas Valley I wanted from the start. I live up in the canyon about 30 minutes out of town in the mountains and don't always make it down to the local trails to see all the flowers blossom so I tell myself that I must have just missed the purples =)
Here is a shot of the mosaic all ready for gluing and after it all it turned out exactly as I planned initially -
an impression of a crisp early morning in the spring when the ground is turning green in the mountains and the purple flowers are shooting up faster than you could count them.I picked these grouting photos to share because I wanted everyone to see how the big green mountain is created using iridescent glass which creates wonderful effects in the changing light. Those psychedelic looking pines are actually forest green but when the light catches them right, they shimmer with a rainbow of color. The circles in the sky as well as in the flower fields are also iridescent so they have a similar effect.
