José Guadalupe Posada

Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead – or Día de Muertos – is a holiday celebrated in Mexico every year. Beginning on October 31st and running until November 2nd, the holiday encourages families to come together and remember those who they have lost. It is a time for prayer, celebration and spiritual journeys. If you find yourself in Mexico at this time of year you are sure to encounter beautifully decorated altars called ofrendas, Mexican marigolds called cempasúchil and the iconic skulls which they call calaveras.

From old Aztec ruins and colourful masks to modern graffiti and skull-shaped confectionery; calaveras are an important symbol of Mexican culture. They serve as a reminder to enjoy life and embrace mortality. The calavera is a way of acknowledging that life is sacred and that death is a rite of passage. In Mexico, the inevitable should not be feared or avoided but faced with smiles and celebrations. For this reason, the calavera plays an important role during Día de Muertos.

The most famous calavera is called La Calavera Catrina. Rooted deep within the Mexican psyche, Catrina is considered to be the personification of Día de Muertos. She was created by José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) in 1910 and is arguably the country's quintessential image of death.

https://illustrationchronicles.com/Jose-Guadalupe-Posada-Skulls-Skeletons-and-Macabre-Mischief

José Guadalupe Posada

Posada was Mexico's most illustrious illustrator. A political cartoonist and engraver, he worked tirelessly for over forty-years producing illustrations for periodicals, newspapers, novels, cookbooks and songbooks. Posada was fortuneate to live during a time of technological progression and modernity. Advancements in printing allowed for street literature allowed Posado to grow and become popular.

While Posado majority of work was illustrations and cartoons for Newspapers periodicals he is best remembered for his amusing and often satirical calaveras. During Día de Muertos celebrations, Posada would work hard to produce work featuring these skeletal figures. In pre-Columbian times, images of skulls and skeletons often represented rebirth into the next stage of life. In Posada's hands, these traditional symbols took on a new life and became a way to make social and political critiques.

Most of his Calaveras were whimsical in appearance by ; being dressed almost like the living in the clothes and performing everyday activities like riding bicycles, playing the guitar or taking the tram. Sometimes they were an instrument of celebration; presenting sympathetic portraits of peasants, heroes and revolutionaries. This was a perfect embodiment of the joyful, whimsical holiday of Dia De los Muertos.

https://illustrationchronicles.com/Jose-Guadalupe-Posada-Skulls-Skeletons-and-Macabre-Mischief

CHARACTERISTICS of Posados Calaveras

the artwork of Pasado while has a large variety of subject matter from his work with dia de los muetos to his political cartoons, they do adhere to a specific "Look"!

Lines- While this characteristic was mainly driven by production and printing. Posado used an outline and used a series of parallel likes to create areas of shading.
Shapes of Black- in addition to the line-work posado created shapes of black that indicated shading
Whimsical- especially evident in his calaveras his artwork has a sense of humor and joy with skeletons dressed up as the living .

Assignment: a Modern Calaveras

Inspired by Dia De los Muertos and Jose Posado's fun calaveras illustrations. Students will create a "Living" skeleton in the style of Posado and engravings of the time. Students will create their subjects by Taking a skeleton and dress it up in a period, culture or profession. Please do not dress it up as a celebrity tho... no Justin timber lake skeletons!

Step one: create an awesome skeleton collage.. * keep the background separate from the subject.

Step two: in Photoshop create three copies of the skeleton character. one layer is normal, one layer is threshold, one layer is posterized

Step three: trace the outline and all details in illustrator to create a line drawing

Step four: trace the black shadow shapes from the thresholded layer

Step five: add sections of parallel lines using the blend tool for shadding

STep five: brind back to Photoshop for some light painting.

Dia de los Muertos