El Castillo at Tulum
watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown
I will include this recently completed painting in the book, ‘Time Travel with a bag of crayons’ that I am compiling.
The main pyramid-castle at Tulum, shown here, is spectacularly situated on 12-metre cliffs looking east over the Caribbean. One of the few Mayan sites with a fortified wall, Tulum was the only one on the coast and thus controlled trade with South and Central America. Because of its economic importance, it was one of the few cities that was still populated when the Spaniards arrived.
There are two kinds of painting trips – those involving some hiking or even climbing, where you carry all your stuff and paint on location, and those where you stay in one place long enough to spread out and do a ‘proper job,’ letting the paint dry between layers and other refinements.
The hike around the entire Tulum
archaeological site can be completed in under an hour, but took my daughters
and me close to two hours because I started a crayon sketch every time I found a
shady place to sit down. Here are two pictures
that I completed after returning to Canada.
North side of El Castillo, from the base of
the cliff
watercolour and crayon
©2010 Charlene Brown
Mayan sunrise (sun
symbol copied from another building)
watercolour, crayon and Photoshop™
©2010
Charlene Brown
