Sketches from the local makers’ network planning meeting.
Fluffy Birkenstocks
Mexico, Sketch, sustainable developmentMexico
At the market
Book, Colouring-in, Events, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, sustainable development
San Cristóbal is a good place to be an economic activist: there are several farmers’ and makers’ markets and shops, veggie basket schemes, independent businesses and neighbours selling each other local produce. I’ve been active in REPASur, a solidarity economy network that also organises a market (known as a tianguis in Mexico) every two months. Malanga Illustrations has been selling colouring books, stickers and notebooks and I ran a collaborative colouring workshop too. Fun!
Angry
Mexico, Sketch, UncategorizedMy feelings during yesterday’s neighbourhood meeting to elect the new water committee… check shirt man was me on the inside.
Boys colour Sancris
Colouring-in, kids, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Värityskuvat
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by boys throwing themselves at my Sancris colouring book. “Are you painting???” they might say and of course I offer to share and they take over the “Merry-go-round” or “Zinacantan”picures.
Colouring Sancris: kids
Book, Colouring-in, Finland, Inclusion, kids, Mexico, Publication, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street scene, Suomi, Värityskuvat
Age 5 in Brighton 
Age 5 in Brighton 
Age 4 colouring in Helsinki! …no colours no problem. 
Dad-daughter collaborations 
Age 11 in Umeå 
Age 10 in Nepantla 
Age 4 in San Diego
Children typically throw themselves at the colouring book – I’m not exaggerating, it’s surprised and delighted me each time. In the case of Luana, age 4, nobody had colouring pens to hand when she received hers… but luckily my partner had a pencil and with this she started happily colouring the merry-go-round picture grey.
Another nice thing is that most kids can find “themselves” in one of the drawings. Buying sweet buns, riding a dolphin, chasing a pigeon, on dad’s shoulders, wearing a silly animal hat or teasing their brother – just look carefully and you’re in there.
Colouring Sancris: 1
Colouring-in, Finland, Just for fun, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Suomi, Värityskuvat
In Mexico City, four people colouring “Vespa and fruit” 
In Sastamala, colouring “Carrusel” 
In Sancris, colouring “Calles Coloniales” 
In Sancris, colouring “Felt animals” and “Decorations” 
In Borgå, colouring “Colonial houses”.
Check this out, grown people from the ages of 22 to 72 having a whale of a time colouring in Sancris street scenes! Accompanied by tea, mezcal, campari, espresso, chocolate and fruit panna cotta, but most importantly by good people!
Real vs drawing: fruit, vespa
Book, Colouring-in, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Street scene, VärityskuvatThis double-spread image for my colouring book shows a typical street. I had in mind Almolonga here in Sancris, with its verdurerías (greengrocers), carnicerías (butchers) and abarrotes (corner shops). I also wanted to draw someone who pulled up next to me at a red light once: a young mum with her two kids, all on one Italika vespa, all wearing their favourite helmets. It’s typical here to see whole families on vespas but normally the driver is a man and nobody has helmets on.
And the third element is the fruit salad guy with his portable stall (a tooled-up wheelbarrow). You see these guys on street corners selling varieties of fruit in a cup. The jicaletas in the picture are slices of jícama on a stick, with a lick of jam or chili. You see juice guys, the orange-juice people with a nifty little orange-lathe for peeling. The mango seller uses a useful no-hands innovation for mango peeling: you stick a sharpened screwdriver into the base of the fruit and peel.
This is what the drawing looks like in the book; what it looked like when I was halfway through colouring it, and the final product.
You can buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book on my Gumroad page.
The B/W original
My partly coloured version
My fully coloured version
Fave Sancris books
Academia, background, Book, Mexico, Sancris en ColoresJust because I’m publishing a colouring book doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with references!
I’ve found in-depth background for my drawings in these excellent books. (You can find many of them at the bookshop La Cosecha.)
Aubry, Andrés: San Cristóbal de las Casas. Su historia urbana, demográfica y monumental 1528-1990.
Segunda edición, Colectivo Bats’il K’op, San Cristóbal de las Casas 2017. This is a masterpiece about Sancris, covering the city’s history through its architecture, using poetic language and solid sources. Although it doesn’t try to entertain it often does, with anecdotes like the fine ladies’ church strike when the Bishop tried to stop them drinking hot chocolate during Mass. I used it for points about the orientation of the town, San Nicolás being the church of the black residents, the eggs in the stucco of the Cathedral, and la Merced (including the detail about the disturbing-sounding institution for detaining “obstreperous women” that was run on the square in the 1700s.) A lot of the decisions taken here at the city’s initial founding are still relevant today, such as the orgins and crafts of the different barrios. Since Sancris is an old, colonial city (only the second founded by the Spaniards in the Americas) we tend to look around the pretty centre and think that this is what it’s always looked like. But Aubry writes about things like the shifts in colour from the mudejar (Moorish) to the Neoclassical styles, reminding us that nothing is immutable.Morris, Walter F; Martínez, Alfredo; Schwartz, Janet & Karasik, Carol: Guía Textil de los Altos de Chiapas, A Textile Guide to the Highlands of Chiapas.
Segunda edición, CONACULTA y Na Bolom, Ciudad de México y San Cristóbal de las Casas 2014. This photo-packed book charts the different local indigenous weaving styles with a tongue-in-cheek commentary that comes from real earned insider knowledge. I especially enjoyed the tidbit about the cardigan being introduced to Chamula by evangelican fanatics trying to bribe their way into peoples’ faiths. I used the book for the information about the embroidery from Zinacantán. Morris et al tell us that the striking Zinacanteco flower embroidery was inspired by Guatemalan refugees who came through in the 1970s. Again, you look at something that looks traditional and assume it’s always been that way… The flower designs on the Zinacantan family’s clothes in the colouring book are my own improvisations.Guess, Virginia Ann: Spirit of Chiapas: the Expressive Art of the Roof Cross Tradition.
Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2004. I came across this scholarly book in Oaxaca and bought it for big money. Guess does a great job of cataloguing San Cris’ roof crosses and talking to their owners and blacksmiths about them, but she doesn’t actually manage to get to the root of where they came from and what they mean.Montaña Barbano, María M., Huicochea Gómez, Laura, & Mejía Lozada, Diana (2015). Being “coleto”: plants inside the houses of “El Cerrillo”, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.
Culturales, 3(2), 181-207. Instituto de Investigaciones Culturales-Museo, Mexicali Here’s an article about Coleta women talking about their houseplants. Coletos is a name for the locals, but it’s fraught with meaning: it refers to the dominant class who’ve lived in San Cristóbal for centuries and claim Spanish ancestry. When the Zapatista rebellion took San Cristóbal in 1994, three civil society movements arose in response: two in favour, and the grouping los Auténticos Coletos, against. Our other neighbours are known as Sancristobalenses, meaning locals who don’t consider themselves coletos, and foraneos, or “outsiders” like me who come from other parts of Mexico and the world. The article about the plants also gives insights into how traditional houses are organised, with their central patio for decorative flowers and their backyard “sitio” for urban farming – and how the subdivision of houses as families grow makes this trickier.
I haven’t read these other books yet but they are very intriguing. Zapantera Negra contains stories by Black Panthers who have visited the Zapatistas in solidarity – the urban-rural clash came out very vividly in one of the testimonies I read, with the aged Black Panther being expected to ford streams and balance on narrow mountain paths. ¿Dónde Están? or Where Are They? is about Afromexicans.
You can buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book on my Gumroad page.
Portraits of a succulent
Botanical, Mexico, Sketch
During lockdown I haven’t been able to people-watch and hence, people-sketch… but the shapes of plants on my balcony are almost as interesting!
Real vs drawing: Animal hats
Colouring-in, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street scene, Värityskuvat
Selling animal hats in Chiapa de Corzo 
The “Hats” image in the colouring book 
Animal hats in Sancris
Here in San Cristóbal de las Casas, 2200 m above sea level, when it gets cold it gets cold. The locals seize the opportunity to sell shawls, hoodies and knitted hats to the unwary tourists who left home in the sunny afternoon without enough layers… well, knitted goods and these synthetic, imported animal hats. You sometimes see whole families where everyone’s bought a different hat. Very sweet! I wanted to include this in my Sancris colouring book and now you can also decide which colour the sheep, canary and snake hats will be.
You can buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book on my Gumroad page.
Real vs drawing: Sancris felt animals
Colouring-in, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street scene, Värityskuvat
A classic felt bovine getting its portrait drawn 
My interpretations
These felt souvenirs, made in neighbouring Chamula, are a ubiquitous sight here in San Cristóbal de las Casas. I find them very cute and endearing, even though they aren’t exactly cuddly. I prefer the ones made from rough woollen felt rather than the bright synthetic felt you see more and more. The animals sometimes have bright red rings around their eyes, giving them a hungover or even deranged look. As part of the great Sancris colour anarchy, you can colour these in any (and I mean ANY) combinations you like, each panel a different hue, and remain totally true to the original style. I wanted to include these animals in my Sancris colouring book – I originally got the idea of the colouring book when I started notcing the subtle differences in the Sancris felt giraffes, and thought that it would be fun to be able to colour them to my liking.
You can buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book here on my Gumroad page.
Real vs drawing: la Merced plaza
Colouring-in, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street scene, Värityskuvat
I have a soft spot for La Merced plaza in San Cristóbal: you often see people being free and active there, doing sports and smooching their boyfriends, like in European parks. We in the capoeira group CECA used to train* on the outdoor stage at La Merced, watching the clouds lit up by the setting sun while stretching. In the photos we are practicing a sequence with Treinel Cavera (in the rasta-striped knit hat). The capoeira, breakdancing and dog-walking is what I had in mind when I drew the image of la Merced for my Sancris colouring book.
You can buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book here on my Gumroad page.
*Now we train at Wapani cultural centre on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6 pm.
Marching and sketching at IWM
croquis, Events, Mexico, Street sceneI took my sketchbook to the International Women’s Day march and managed to jot down some 30-second croquis on the hoof.
Snacks seller
Mexico, Sketch, Street sceneSketch of the day: a woman about to start selling deep-fried snacks. She was carrying her stock, hot sauce bottle, trestle and toddler while having a phone conversation. This was in San Cristóbal’s central plaza. 
New colouring book!
Book, Colouring-in, Mexico, Publication, Sancris en Colores, Street scene, Värityskuvat
For the past three years I’ve been chipping away at a little project of mine: a colouring book featuring street scenes from San Cristóbal de las Casas in Mexico, the picturesque town I live in. There’s so much detail and colour going on that it’s hard to take much in while we stroll around… apple blossoms peeking over a wall; a house painted in turquoise and peach; Chamula women’s blouse embroidery fashions; a courtyard from the 1500s; a garage opened to sell multicoloured pastries; the breakdance crew at La Merced; street dogs rolled up to sleep; the spectacular piercings of an Argentinian hippie.
With this colouring book, I want to give us fans of Sancris a chance to sit down and contemplate it, one scene at a time. And here we can finally paint a house in magenta and purple.
I’ll be distributing in independent bookshops in Sancris. You can also buy the PDF print-at-home version of the whole colouring book here on my Gumroad page.
Oaxaca beach hippies
Comics, Mexico, Sketch, Street scene
An ink sketch of fellow travellers on the beach in Oaxaca.
Courtyard plants in Oaxaca
Botanical, Mexico, SketchDuring a recent visit to Oaxaca I sketched these plants in the courtyard of the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO). It’s a beautiful space where people were working and reading… a couple of sketching tourists fit right in.
Zapatistas at Oventic
croquis, Events, Mexico, SketchQuick pencil sketches from a cultural event at Caracol Oventic, one of the civic centres of the Zapatista movement for indigenous autonomy.
Colouring in the house
Colouring-in, Mexico, VärityskuvatTurns out that everyone likes to colour, even Masters students.
One of the creations of the night.
Project teaser
Book, Events, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street sceneA sketch for something bigger…
Raw from my sketchbook.
Women’s festival batch 3
croquis, Events, Mexico, SketchMore croquis from the EZLN International Festival for Women who Fight! (Although the verb luchar in Spanish in this case means “struggle” as in “the ideological struggle” , rather than actually fighting. It also means wrestling, as in lucha libre. Fun with etymology.)
I drew these women during a really confused lecture on “Dismantling The Man into Things”. Hence the sceptical faces.
Women at a lecture
croquis, Mexico, SketchMore sketches from the women´s encounter in March.
I drew these during talks on masculinity in childhood (halfway through which two boys in the audience started shooting us with imaginary pistols) and on social organization as love. There was a whooooole range of talks, some weirder than the rest…
These croquis are of varying quality depending on how still the “model” was and how much time I had to draw her. I chose faces that interest me.
Zapatista women’s festival
croquis, Events, Mexico, Sketch7000 women make a noise like a low-frequency beehive. Every morning when we crawled out of our tents in the freezing, clear air, the hum was already going and it kept getting stronger as more people woke up and started looking for breakfast. The festival was organized by the Zapatista movement and hosted by Caracol 4 in Morelia. Nobody knew quite what to expect. I arrived with a contingent from Ama-Awa, the women agroecologists, carrying tents, food and water for three days. We were pleasantly surprised to find abundant flushing toilets, food outlets (although the queues did stretch out), showers and drinking water taps… all without the presence of a single man. And no alcohol either. My friend’s ten-year-old daughter could attend any session she liked without her mum having to worry. And there was plenty to choose from, ranging from lectures on land rights, Indigenous lesbianism, masculinity in childhood to art, dance and theatre and workshops for making reusable menstrual pads. And a Colombian batucada.
I sketched participants during the lectures, amazed at the sheer range of women there… tall, short, skinny, round, old, young, lawyers, hippies, gorgeous, ugly, of all colours, made-up and rolled-out-of-bed. Here are some of them.
History of the festival: http://luchadoras.mx/mujeres-zapatistas/
Amazing photos by Trasluz photographers
At the opening ceremony
This was just one of the hardcore women who brought their babies to the event and stood with them in the hot sun for hours during the first day’s plays. Wearing layers of heavy clothing and knitted black balaclavas.
Tostada seller
Smoking and chatting
The Danish delegation
Mexican Autonomous Midwives book out on Amazon!
Book, Comics, MexicoThe book whose cover I drew, “Mujeres Situdas: Las Parteras Autónomas en México” is out now on Amazon! Go ahead and buy!
San Cris felt souvenirs
Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street sceneWould you buy a multi-coloured felt cow with goggly orange-rimmed eyes? Of course! They are endearing! These marvels of creativity are sold by scores of handicraft sellers in San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, and once you start looking, you start noticing how amazing they are. The quality of the felt, the sense of colour combination, the finishing, the creativity… Felt bulls and chickens are classics, and the current fashion is for felt unicorns and Tyrannosaurus Rexes.
Mexico City sketches: trendy Roma
Comics, croquis, Mexico, Sketch, Street sceneMore sketches based on people flitting by… a happy man at a ramen restaurant, girls passing the coffee shop in Roma and La Condesa.
Mexico City sketches: eyelashes, tree
croquis, Mexico, Street sceneI had a little bit more time to draw these: a woman in the juice bar with impeccable makeup… and the tree and bike racks outside.
Mexico City sketches
Comics, croquis, Mexico, Street sceneSketches from Calle Pedregal around the corner from the embassy. People glimpsed on the street or in the juice bar, me trying to pay attention to the detail in glimpses, without staring, drawing without them noticing…
Smoking ladies on a tiled bench outside a sex shop.
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Sketch of the day: a meeting
Mexico, SketchAgroecologists listening to a talk about alternative markets and food sovereignty in southern Brazil!
Midwives book cover
Academia, Book, MexicoI’m working on the cover illustration for Hanna Laako’s book about midwives, “Mujeres situadas, la partería autónoma en México”. Coming out soon at an Amazon near you!
Sketch of the day: Tulum seaside
Mexico, SketchI was wearing a sweater against the afternoon wind, but got some sketches of fellow beachgoers…
Sketch of the day: Tenejapa carnival
croquis, Events, Mexico, SketchThe week-long carnival in Tenejapa in the Chiapas highlands includes several colorful elements, such as this “chasing of the cow”. The men dress in red ceremonial finery and, among other things, chase a woven-mat “cow” around the town plaza. (Later there’s “chasing the bull” at another plaza, looking exactly the same as “chasing the cow”, but at that event cameras aren’t welcome… so I figured sketchpads aren’t either). It’s a day full of symbolism and prehispanic references and local pride – also lost of whooping at jokes. It’s very contagious and after we left we spent the rest of the day going “i-e-e-e!!”
Special costume including a stuffed ocelot.
Even though he was standing still it was hard to get all the textile detailes!
The procession’s drummer.
The “cow”!
Ocelot man from another angle.
Zapatistas and zapaturistas
Events, Mexico, Sketch, sustainable developmentSome sketches from the art festival CompArte at the zapatista centre Caracol Oventic. The festival took place for a week at the campus of CIDECI with concerts, changing art shows, workshops, documentaries and theatre; and at the weekend there were performances at Oventic too.
EZLN soldiers holding the crowd barrier
An intrigueing experience for sure. This time I had a bit more time for sketches as most people stayed put watching the performances of theatre, dance, poetry and music.
A “bailable” dance
The girl band – like all the zapatistas, wearing Indigenous traditional dress and balaclavas – were a riot of energy and power.
Zapatista girl band singer
Zapatista girl band bassist
As always, people couldn’t resist filming instead of watching. Or, in my case, drawing.
Filming
Spectators
Ears
EZLN soldier holding up a crowd barrier
Sketch of the day: faces
Comics, Mexico, Nib and ink, SketchMore ink and nib work: people on the streets of Mexico.
Adults’ colouring in
Colouring-in, Events, Mexico, VärityskuvatI took a pile of my colouring-in pictures to a work party recently, reasoning that not everyone would like to join the bachata class or read a poem and this could be a nice activity for the less extroverted of us. It worked a treat! The table with the pictures and box of coloured pencils quickly became a centre for chatting and colouring.
I was also surprised over how different everybody’s style was. Antonio started by colouring the whole elephant an even grey, according to me the most boring part of the picture. Lupe coloured all the shoes and was the only one who finished in the sense of covering her whole picture in colour. Giovanna added patterns and psychedelic details to the forest scene. Both she and José Luis gave the little girl in the picture a green or blue elf skin tone. I think this could be a hit at other events too. 
Sketch of the day: Street scenes
Comics, Mexico, Sketch, Street sceneFrom my sketchbook: some Mexican street images.
Sketch of the day: grasshopper salesman
Mexico, Sketch, Street sceneA Mexican street scene: one of the guys selling toasted snacks, peanuts and grasshoppers (chapulines) with lemon and hot sauce. (In addition to people selling macadamia nuts, creamy pastries, shoeshine services, oranges whole, peeled or juiced, cotton candy etc… and I haven’t even mentioned the textiles or child labour)
This guy was one of the least enthusiastic salesmen I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived in African controlled economies.
Sketch of the day: guajolotes aka turkeys
Mexico, Sketch, sustainable development, UncategorizedIn honour of the US American Thanksgiving holiday coming up, here’s a sketch of turkeys! And the small boy who was chasing them gleefully. 
These two black turkeys came high-stepping down the path like they owned the place. They were not much smaller than the smallest kids playing football on the path, and for a minute I was worried about how the beak vs cheek contact would go. But the Southside Team goalie stepped up and chased the turkeys back the way they’d come with an exuberant series of sideways leaps, as if he was swinging on invisible lianas or vaulting invisible fences. At one point he did go splat on the ground but the turkeys looked at him indignantly and beat a dignified retreat.
Turkeys are called guajolotes in Mexico and are one of the few animals to have been domesticated in Mesoamerica. Provecho!
Ladies who lunch
Mexico, Nib and ink, Sketch, Street scene
Elite ladies with expensive fashions in a city café. Sketch made with a nib and ink bottle – makes for a nice ‘live’ line.
Hammock croquis
croquis, Just for fun, Mexico, SketchYou’d think that someone lounging in a hammock on the beach would stay still for more than five minutes. Not the case. My drawings of friends in hammocks ended up as express sketches – croquis – live drawing done with very little time.
But once they moved and messed up my portrait I could still work on the ropes and knots.
Hammocks define the outermost points of the person inside… it’s as if they wrap a plane around limbs and protrusions which makes for fun drawings. There’s something early-90s-computer-graphicksy about them.
And you get to feel like you did something creative on holiday.
Malanga Illustrations 