Aztec shaman (mask)

I am now making an Aztec shaman with a mask. So I thought it was necessary to have reference from  an inspirational meso american style artist named Nacho Bernal uno. I have been following him on Instagram for a while now and I love the way he crafts his drawings with such precision and using just the right amounts of subtle shadows to give the image a good sense of depth. Much of hid work has been inspired by the ante culture So I will be taking some reference from his work when considering my aztec shaman print.

Nacho is also a mural painter and he can create these very detailed and colourful wall pieces. This is inspiring for me because this is where I want my practice to go and how I want to present and communicate myself as an illustrator.

Tlaloc is an Aztec God of water. This is a very famous relic fro the aztec culture and even nacho bernal uses this in some of his designs. So I have decided to also use this as part of my shaman headdress. I think it could work well and it will be a nice change from the animal design. I want to make a diverse range of outcomes and this is a good way for me to change up the design.

This is the final drawn version of the aztec mask shaman. Because I am drawing my shamans A3 it does take a very long time as there is a high level of detail. But to keep the consistent aesthetic throughout my printed images, I need to make sure that they are all rendered with the same level of quality. This does mean that a lot of time are going into these drawings but I think the printed versions make it all worth it and it is a very good way for me to translate my pencil drawings into a sellable product.

Again I am just test out as many possible backgrounds and colour combinations that I can achieve with these prints.  I think making these screen prints onto a range of paper colours such as pink gives them a much more contemporary aesthetic.

I have also printed some of these aztec shamans on to corrugated card to try and get a new possible outcome. This has actually been one of my favourite outcomes because the image has not been fully printed and there is a grainy texture that combined with the brown tones of the card makes a very authentic, ancient shaman print. Because these have not got the full colours and lines of each layer i don't think they can be used to transfer ono products but I think once framed they can definitely be used at some sellable prints. I will continue to work on these types of materials to get more ranges of outcomes.