Today’s offbeat anecdote will introduce you to my newest and current favorite piece “Mamacita”! I can’t wait for you to properly meet her and learn a little bit more about the process of how she came to be. So, lets giddy up and go back to the very beginning: the inception of the inspirational bolt of lightning that struck to create this marvelous Mexican mistress. We will quickly rewind our watches back to the weeks leading up to Halloween, in the very height of spooky season. Amidst the ghouls and goblins swirling in the world around me, I was posted up lazily sprawled on my slightly uncomfortable but free couch in my living room while scrolling through the trenches of the ‘gram’s many ads and advertisements. Amidst the Halloween t-shirts, wedding paraphernalia, and cute animal videos I stumbled across this awesome looking AI edit (or creation?) of a girl with the classic Dias de Muertos ‘Sugar Skull’ makeup on. It could only be described as DOPE! Not only was the picture stunning but it also had a cool factor of 100 with a demure demand to be a muse. I did not hesitate to take a screenshot to store her in an album with good company of my thousands of pictures of potential inspirations. Typically, these snapshots of inspiration get lost in the mass of photos that plague my phone for months at a time only to be found and sorted through while on some sort of mode of transportation or the other. This particular story, however, had the rare and unique experience of a quick stint on the bench as I had been itching to find the perfect way to immortalize this very woman.
The immortalization of this beautiful lady came by transforming the skull candy girl into her skier counterpart, the infamous “mamacita”. Now, I don’t know if the “mamacita” is found in every ski town or mountain but in Vail she is a central character to the ski season. Every year, the town floods with the many beautiful and bejeweled “mamacitas” arriving to enjoy their winter vacation and ready to dazzle their fellow slope-goers in an eye-grabbing metallic onesie ski-suit or some sort of fur ensemble meant to exert their supremeness to us mere common folk who are sporting decades old raggedy skiwear. Who would be more fitting to be armed with a bejeweled headdress, beautiful ornamental flowers and those long, expensive earrings that were just as icy as the ski slopes this mamacita is ready to find herself barreling down? The answer is no one. So, almost as swiftly as the inspiration struck, I found myself poised and ready to pick up my apple pen and start creating the base of my “mamacita to be”.
While creating I like to have either music playing in the background of a show playing on the tv or my laptop. I find that the background music helps me quiet my grumpy and sometimes hyper-critical inner voice, allowing me to create in a calm and cruelty-free environment uninterrupted by thoughts of “what special type of garbage is that?” bursting through. For this particular piece, I had the Netflix show “the Perfect Couple” playing in the background, (which meant I missed most of the hints and clues leading to solving the mystery…) as well as the Buffalo Bills game (GO BILLS!!). Regardless of my the distractions I had set up for my pesky critical inner-voice I found mutterings of “what in the world should I do here?” and “Well that simply will not do!” seizing the gaps in concentration while working on the jewels found in the headdress. Each and every project that you create has one part that tests your confidence or patience to find the solution to the quizzical puzzle, in other words, there is often a specific part of each project that is a giant pain in your ass. For my “mamacita” that thorn bloomed from the headdress jewels. After the ease of the ornamental flowers flowing freely from mind to page and the goggles falling effortlessly in place, I found to my great annoyance that the jewels simply did not want to co-operate with as much grace as their neighbors. Instead, the jewels demanded more fresh starts than a troubled teenager. Perhaps my expectations were the problem: I wanted the jewels to shine & stand out, to have both depth and purpose, instead they rebelled and looked like a weird and incohesive strand of lines and colors. It was lucky that I had opted to create this piece digitally, for I would hate to think of the sheer volume of papers that would have been lost to the headdress jewels rebellion had I been making a physical piece. With the ease of the “undo” button I was able to try several techniques that I just plain hated until I finally found the shade step, I used to create the jewels you see today.
Another aspect that I like about creating a digital piece is the ease of mixing different medias together. For “Mamacita” I blended the use of both watercolor and pastels to create a fun and soft contrast in mediums between the ruggedness of the goggles and gems and the softness of girl’s face and flowers created using watercolor. I felt like this combination of medias created more depth and natural focal points in the piece. The finished fiesta of color and concept is one that I am so proud of and excited to share with you!
I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about this beautiful belle and will tune in and join us once again for next weeks offbeat anectdote!
As always,
Keep it offbeat!
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