Monsters of Central America:The Cadejo!

The Evil Black Cadejo

Cadejos are creatures in Salvadoran, Belizean,Nicaraguan, Costa Rican, Honduran, Guatemalan, Panamanian and southern Mexican folklore  that are usually seen as large shaggy dogs,but are not quite dogs. They often look as if they are part goat, with horns and sometimes even cloven-hoofed feet. A goat-like smell often accompanies a cadejo. There is a good white cadejo and an evil black cadejo. Both are spirits that appear at night to travelers.

Seeing a white cadejo means you will be protected by it on your journey and good fortune will come your way.

Seeing a black cadejo, however, does not bode well for you, for the black cadejo exists as three separate species: one is the devil himself assuming this form and who will drag your soul to hell, another is a man-eating beast, and the third one is a hybrid of the two. It is a strong and dangerous creature but can be killed by a well-armed person.

The Good White Cadejo

Happy Friday!

642: Something’s Afoot on Mars!

 

Quotable Creeps.

I have to talk a little bit about this graphic. The drawing is about four years old, done with five others that I will bring out eventually. They are all serpentine creatures wrapped around the outside of a page, and I did them all on a plane to New Jersey to visit my husband’s family in the spring.
I now plan to use them as you see here; I would really LOVE to use them as stationary, but I think I would prefer to redraw and refine them just a bit. When I drew them, it was to keep my sanity. An older man(late 60’s?) in the seat in front of us on the plane was talking nonstop throughout the flight. What was he talking about? The hundreds and hundreds of animals he had killed. He had shot caribou in Alaska. He had killed some reindeer in Finland. He had shot antelopes of all kinds in Africa and he wanted to kill some stuff in Asia but couldn’t get the right permits or something. He wished he could go shoot penguins, too–he figured they’d be easy. All over the USA he had killed and stuffed every mammal and bird he could get his mitts on and he probably included some reptiles and amphibians in there too..I’m not sure, I tried desperately to tune him out. I’m not even sure if the people next to him knew him or what, but they kept listening. I noticed they didn’t ask him any questions, but they couldn’t get a word in edgewise anyway. Me? I was drawing endlessly, just trying to zone out, trying to tune him the heck OUT by just drawing serpentine creatures round and round the pages in my sketchbook. I saved four of them to scan in here, because they’re pretty neat, I think. Art under stress can sometimes look pretty cool. But I would have preferred otherwise.
Curiously…I wonder how this guy will look after he’s dead? Oh, if he only knew what all goes on in the process of embalming you, to make you a pretty corpse at your funeral…you get your anus sewn shut so it won’t leak and prickly plastic caps put under your eyelids so your eyes won’t bulge open. Then you can be almost as good a display as your taxidermy.

30-Day Dinosaur Challenge: Favorite Theropod!

Oh, for heaven’s sake, could there be an easier answer for me?

I have several art challenges going at once…when I feel like doing one, I pick up that sketchbook, and I may not go back to it for a few days. I go at my own pace.

(Here is a quick lesson on theropods.)

The general public not being total dinosaur nerds like me,I suppose most of the general public learned what a carnotaurus was once the Disney movie Dinosaur came out. I am happy to say I was made aware of it much earlier, back in the early 90’s, when I was in college. I found a bookstore downtown at my school that had some discounted book out front and found this great kid’s book called A Gallery of Dinosaurs and Other Early Reptiles, by David Peters. It is still one of my favorite dino books because every dinosaur or other reptile in it is pictured in a group of its peers, to scale. And with kids included so you can see, if you’re a kid, how you compare with the giants..or the shrimps! Anyway, this was my first look at Carnotaurus.

 

Holy smokes, what a horror of a face.

 

I instantly loved it.