How to Make Aztec Art
- 1). Select a small brush and black oil or acrylic paint to create the outline of a large circle on the wall that you want to decorate or, alternatively, use a large canvas or board as a base for your work.
- 2). Give the circle a jagged outside edge. Zigzag around it with black paint and fill the resulting triangles with black circles.
- 3). Paint two more black circles inside the outer one to create a couple of bands of different width. Fill one of these bands in with a symmetrical, colored, geometric pattern. You could fill it with a series of red circles all the way around, for example. Fill the band in outside the red circles with dark green paint. Next paint an identical, bright yellow triangle inside each of these smaller circles and finish this section with a blue dot, or tiny circle, in the center of each yellow triangle. Divide the other band into about eight equal sections with barriers made of triple red, white and blue lines. Paint simple representations of life-forms like frogs, birds and human figures inside each section. Exaggerate distinguishing features like the frog's legs and bird's wings. Paint the life-forms in vivid colors and fill in the space around them with colors too.
- 4). Use a variety of brightly colored paints to outline shapes inside the large empty circle in the middle of your painting. Randomly situate squares, circles, triangles, flower-head shapes and star outlines around the large circle. Fill these outlines with either colorful geometric patterns - swirls, zigzags, interconnecting and overlapping shapes, for example - or simple representations of natural images, human figures or small activity scenes such as horses, trees, skulls, warriors, kings and battles. Exaggerate distinguishing features on these images. Show warriors with over-large muscles, for example, and skulls with huge eye sockets and rows of teeth. Fill in any unfilled spaces with color and if some large areas remain that are just painted one color, paint small geometric patterns within them at arbitrary intervals. The more brightly colored and abstract the overall design, the better.
