AZTEC MESOAMERICAN — CODEX PICTOGRAPHIC VISUAL STYLE

VISUAL STYLE: The visual language of Aztec and broader Mesoamerican codices — the screen-fold books of pre-Columbian civilisation. Pictographic figures in strict profile, arranged in registers on bark paper or deerskin ground. Every image is also a notation — visual language operating simultaneously as picture and text.

COLOUR PALETTE: The pigments of pre-Columbian manuscript painting — turquoise (#40B5AD), red ochre (#C1440E), black (#1A0A00), yellow (#D4A843), and the warm cream-buff of amate bark paper (#E8D5A3). Where blue is required — the distinctive Mayan blue, a pigment that has survived centuries. These are earth pigments, mineral pigments, the colours of the natural world processed into medium.

FIGURES: In strict profile — the Mesoamerican convention. Limbs in conventional positions, faces with pronounced features, elaborate headdresses that identify status and deity. Bodies are schematic rather than naturalistic — a visual code rather than an observation.

REGISTER LINES: Horizontal bands separate different narrative sequences. The story reads from bottom to top, or left to right, in the codex tradition. The register line is a red or black horizontal rule.

GLYPHS: Day signs, deity symbols, place names — integrated into the composition as essential elements. The glyph is image and word simultaneously.

GROUND: The warm, slightly irregular surface of amate bark paper or prepared deerskin — the texture of the support visible beneath the paint.

No European perspective. No shading or shadow. No figurative naturalism. Only the pictographic convention of a civilisation that encoded its entire knowledge system in image.