El Dia De Los Muertos

            I haven't done any looks since forever, so I manned up and did one myself! A shortage of models and rejection by my dogs have forced me to embrace my face as a canvas once more.  I took this opportunity to dabble in the cultural festival of El Dia de los Muertos, celebrated annually in Mexico. El Dia de los Muertos is quite similar to what we know as All Saints Day. Originating before the Spanish conquest, it is a mixture of Indigenous and Catholic traditions and it's activities mainly include gathering at cemeteries for the cleaning and decorating of grave sites and socializing amidst lost loved ones.  Although the skeleton is seen as frightening, especially with Halloween, it takes on a very different meaning for El Dia de los Muertos; it represents the dead playfully mimicking the living and is not ghastly what so ever. Hence it is befitting to dress like skeletons, and painting your face to resemble that of a skull is not just celebrating the continuing life of the dead but it should also enable the wearer to overcome the fear of death itself. The mixing of the skulls and flowers for face painting symbolises life and love, with the skull representing death and the flowers representing beauty. Surely this ties back with Mexico's indigenous ancestors who believed that there was life after death and that for sure was more wonderful.
          With this said, my inspiration was a contemporary skull as there is an inversion of the black and white. There are no flowers in this simply because my face isn't big enough lolz. This was done with paint and kajol, and editing was obviously done. I haven't editted pictures in a few months so I'm a bit out of it, so forgive my mess ups please. I was so excited to do this that I really didn't think about practising, and fixing it didn't seem like a likely option =S