As promised.... the Smoking Jaguar

Smoking Jaguar watercolor center panel from handmade card.

The two glyphs are very obviously personal interpretations of the Mayan glyphs. My flame is far too ornate and my cat does not have the typical roundness of a Mayan hand.

My favorite parts are the stripes, the cats eye and  the three "beans" along the bottom. The washes worked out a lot better than I had hoped they would.

Why does the cat have an earring? Well most of the animal faces wore some kind of human decoration in the Mayan originals. I think that was so that the reader would know the difference between the writer talking about the cat in the jungle and the King with the animals name.

I've done two versions of this painting, trying to perfect the ideas. And each time I do it I realize that I like this version the best because the actual painting part... how it flows, is the most spontaneous of the versions.