My Mexican Angel

It was really hard for me to decide what artist to base my Mexican angel on. I admire the craftsmanship and art from Mexico so much… but seeing Mario Castillo’s “The Ancient Memories of Mayahuel’s People Still Breath” this past August sealed the deal. I really loved what he calls “Peceptionism”, in other words how the superposition of images made his painting almost alive and interactive right in front of my eyes.

This year, I also learned how important corn was to the Mesoamerican cultures, and the story of how Quetzalcoatl brought them the seed of corn. And I was brought up greatly eating corn in arepas, bollitos and cachapas… huh? ^ ^. Don’t worry I hope to share these with you someday soon! Corn has been a theme in my work life lately as I even used it as a topic for my students to do artwork related to one of the units they were learning.

So my angel was inspired by corn and Mario Castillo’s paintings! This painting in particular:

I started by drawing the idea that kept coming back to my head… I wanted my angel to be based on a corn!

Then I incorporated Mario Castillo’s Quetzalcoatl at its base… and right underneath I placed the Mexica (Aztec) symbol for an island on the water that is below the eagle in the Mexican flag. I also used the wings in the man in his painting and the weird bird creature!

I also used Mario Castillo’s wings from the winged bird right in the middle of the painting, inside the “vitruvian” like man:

I was not sure how I wanted to continue from that, so I started looking at the incredible Mesoamerican illustration from the Codex Borgia. There were some illustrations that showcased a corn compound being visited by a deity … it fascinated me. I loved the little comic like corns that looked angry too.

I finally decided to create a sort of corn stock / tree of life growing from her head! I added the angry corns, and used some of the decorative motifs of the Borgia Codex… and placed “Toniatoh,” the Mexica (Aztec) sun god at the very top… here is the final draft:

To “color” it in, I decided to use these color pencils that color over dark colors. But I did not want to use black as my background. I thought that blue would be more harmonious with the many greens and yellows that the illustration would have. This was a great call! ^ ^

And so the arduous work of transferring the image began… I first traced it once and then a second time to add the graphite, finally I did various tests and traced it onto the blue paper using medium pressure. Enough to make a dent in the paper.

I removed the tracing paper partially leaving it connected to the final piece on the top as I could see very little. Then to “see” better I used the white color pencil to slightly shade over the drawing… it worked! It was almost like magic seeing my illustration come to life!

Then I worked with the color pencils going sometimes from light to dark and sometimes from dark to light. I used dark blue and dark brown to outline and define the image. It came out just like I saw it in my head.

I am very happy with it… the only thing I was not able to do was to blend more images into it… color pencils top off with their wax and one cannot really draw another image on top. So I did not get the full “Peceptionism” effect…

And with this corny angel… ^ ^ I say goodbye to Mexico! What a delight it was to learn about its incredible rich culture!

I know I overstayed in Mexico compared to other countries, but it was mostly because I am working a lot lately… and I wanted to enjoy what I do here, not rush, not feel I had a deadline… I have enough time settings in my life as a teacher. Get up at this time, eat by this time, catch the train by this time and then every class … has a start time and a finish time… this is what I dislike the most of being a teacher… so when weekends and vacations come, I stay off the clock as much as possible!

Thank you so much for coming along… and stay tuned, who knows where we’ll go next!