Mezza Calaca

365 Calaca A Day project by Carolyn Curtis

Hey look! It's me.... as a calaca... I'm creepy cute, no? I'm day 224.

I have already had a lot of mixed opinions about this - some people love it some people hate it because they feel it's morbid.

Do you know what a calaca is? If you do then you might want to skip this bit. Calaca means skeleton in colloquial Mexican. During the "Day of the Dead" festivals, calacas feature in all forms:  in sculptures and statues, masks, decorations and even sweets/candy.

We may see skulls, death and skeletons as morbid and creepy but in the "Day of the Dead" festival the dead are celebrated and thought of as happy and joyful in their afterlife.

Aside from all that, I think Carolyn's drawing is brilliant - a form of caricature really - despite the very graphic and two dimensional aspect of the drawing and the fact that the decoration could be quite deflective, the illustration still looks like me.

Carolyn also invites you to download and play around with your image... so here I've added a splash of colour with some photo editing software.