September MOTM: The Blooms of Death - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw

this design prompt is based on xan farley's suggestion of "the personified concept of flowers growing from a grave." parts of their idea were admittedly lost in translation when i tweaked it into "the blooms of death." my initial reason had simply been to keep the poll option short and snappy, but then i realised it also expanded the possibilities. not all cultures and funerary traditions keep earthen graves that flowers can grow from, but countless people, across time and space, use flowers in various death-related contexts.

with this wider interpretation in mind, i sat down to brainstorm and research. if you say "flower" and "death" i immediately think of the marigold, famously omnipresent in mexican dia de los muertos observances. but  it felt like too obvious a choice. what other plants are associated with death, funerals, mourning, and remembrance?

some flowers commonly used in present-day (western) burials are lilies, carnations, chrysanthemums, gladiolus, irises, and orchids. to the victorians, bay leaf meant "i change but in death," cypress signified death and mourning, and hemlock meant "you will be my death." i couldn't find any direct references to death in the japanese language of flowers -- hanakotoba -- but noted that aster stands for remembrance, sweet pea for goodbye, and red spider lilies for never meeting again, lost memory, and abandonment. poisonous plants that could claim lives also come to mind, such as belladonna, henbane, wormwood, and mandragora. red poppies makes me think of spilt blood, because they grew on fields that were destroyed during the trench warfare of the world wars. forget-me-nots could stand for longing, love, loss, and/or remembrance, depending on how you interpret their name. and did you know that withered snapdragons look like little skulls?

i also asked friends what kind of flowers they associate with death and mourning; their choices included calla lilies, jasmine, palash, roses, datura, and red spider lilies. marigolds came up twice (they're also used for a ton of occasions in india) and kubi mentioned how in chinese culture, white flowers in general (but lilies and chrysanthemums in particular) are associated with death. i personally grew up being told that bringing heather inside equals inviting death into your home. walking through a local graveyard, i saw heather planted on many tombs, along with silver ragwort and ivy -- but in spring there would have been more daffodils and pansies.

whatever flowers i chose, i wanted the blooms to be flourishing and vivid rather than withered and dying. this is partly because i've already drawn a withered flowers monster once, and partly because it's a less conventional approach -- but it makes sense when you think of death and life as being cyclically interconnected. all things that live eventually die, but death leads to rebirth and new growth. some things die so others may live; corpses turn to earth that plants can take root in. in this design, the symbolism is what matters, so the flowers themselves didn't need to be dying.

the monster could have been fully a plant person, but then i decided they should be partially made of stone -- a material often used for grave markers, mausoleums, sarcophagi, and other funerary structures. the original idea was to incorporate bits of broken tombstones, but i also thought of golems, animated statues, and the terrakotta warriors of qin shi huang. some of the stone parts could be solid while other are hollow, resembling parts of a suit of armour. roots and vines could hold the pieces together, with flowers filling the chest cavity and sprouting from the shoulders.

for a while i got really stuck, trying to funnel my scattered ideas into a comprehensive aesthetic. eventually, i sketched my way to a cool silhouette, with a large type of "collar" that flowers could spill out of; chunky hands; and pauldrons. one of my doodles accidentally started looking vaguely mesoamerican, and then everything finally clicked. i ended up coming full circle, after all -- back to the marigolds.

marigolds are native to the americas and are called cempoalxóchitl in nahuatl, from which the name cempasúchil is derived. during dia de los muertos celebrations they're used to decorate cemeteries and draw in the dead, along with other flowers like cockscomb, baby's breath, carnations, and chrysanthemums. but use of marigolds goes back to pre-colonial times, including aztec cultivation of this flower. i don't have any academic sources to cite, but The Internet™ tells me that aztec people used marigolds for both medicinal and ritual purposes, and that ceremonial use involved honouring the dead, bridging the gap between them and the living. one myth tells of how the mournful huitzilin was reunited with her dead lover xochitl after the god tonatiuh transformed them into a golden flower and hummingbird, respectively. i also can't find any scholarly consensus regarding the relationship between aztec festivals and dia de los muertos, but the aztec empire spanned present-day central mexico, so for this design it made sense to draw on both pre- and post-colonial sources of inspiration.

the stone parts of my monster's body are primarily inspired by aztec sculptures, reliefs, and depictions in codices. i looked at many different carvings and tried to mimic the overall aesthetic -- the semi-angular, "chunky" shapes lent themselves super well to a lithic figure that's part living statue and part hollow armour. his tail is based on a few different depictions of quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. headdresses with long quetzal feathers can be seen on many artefacts, but the smaller decorative elements are more loosely inspired by aztec art. his face? head? helmet? is a mixture of aztec depictions of fanged animals and open-mouthed headdresses like the one on this page of the codex mendoza. that same page also gave a good reference for the shield he's holding in the sketch. meanwhile, the weapon is a macuahuitl -- obsidian blades set in a wooden shaft -- which i based on drawings from a few different codices. last but not least, the little skulls draw on the miquiztli ("death") glyph used to signify the sixth day in aztec calendars. but also, shout-out to depictions of the death god mictlantecutli.

the colour of the stone brings corroded copper and quetzal feathers to mind. but that's honestly accidental:  the pale, blue-green hue is actually a nod to the pastel palette of mexican cemeteries with brightly painted tombs. on top of that, i wanted to use a vivid colour for the same reason that the flowers are flourishing rather than wilting.  in hindsight, i realised the hue also makes it look like he's made of jade or turquoise, both of which were used for mesoamerican mosaic masks and other artefacts. speaking of masks i thought about giving him a face, but felt like filling the helmet with marigolds would look cooler -- it almost make him seem like a lithic robot with a featureless visor.

... aaand that's all, but comment below if you have any questions about this design!

// art + character © me.