Here’s a little example of architecture in Blender 3D based on a place I visited. In November of 2010, my girlfriend of 11 months and I went to Mexico on vacation. In San Miguel de Allende, after tearing up a rotisserie chicken with our bare hands and eating it with tomatillo salsa and a stack of fresh tortillas, while an owl hooted away in a nearby tree and a banda played for a party a block away, we became officially affianced. The next day we traveled to the historic university town of Guanajuato, ate one of the best meals of our lives at Las Mercedes and stayed in the most amazing B&B in the country, Casa Zuniga. The day after that, we explored the town on foot and soaked up the local culture.
The town of Guanajuato is absurdly beautiful. Situated in a ravine, it’s a college town where youngsters greatly outnumber families. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush taught here when he was young and it’s where he met his wife. Famed muralist Diego Rivera grew up here and his childhood home is a museum. There is only one single road in the town proper that allows vehicular traffic, at least above ground; cars drive underground in old mine shafts that look like medieval dungeons.
Guanajuato was once the richest town in Mexico and sits on one of the biggest silver deposits in world history. For a short stretch of time in the 17th century, 2/3rds of all the silver pulled out of the ground anywhere on the planet came from this one small town. As the rich owners were good Catholics, they funded the building of magnificent churches that still stand today. Local Purepecha Indians worked the mines and their lives, in contrast to those of their masters, were short and brutal. Some of them spent most of their lives underground, working these mines for slave wages or less. It’s no wonder that when the Mexican War for Independence started, the one of the first cities taken was Guanajuato. When the rebel army marched on this town from nearby San Miguel de Allende, the royalist troops and the richer criollo families, about 600 men, women and children, holed up in a granary called La Alhóndiga de Granaditas. The well-trained rebels, led by a group of former royalist army officers, were quickly joined by thousands of very angry Purepechas.
The Spaniards were very well stocked in their fortress with food, arms and ammo. It would have been a very long wait for the rebels had it not been for a smart native miner named Juan José de los Reyes Martínez, nicknamed El Pipila (the Turkey). Some say he got his nickname because of the freckles on his neck and face, others because he looked like a turkey when he ran with his arms tucked to his sides. Either way, the man was large and powerful. He spent most of his days carrying loads of silver ore on his back with a carrier made of woven sisal. Due to some quick thinking on his part, the siege lasted only two days. No one could get near the building without being met by a volley of lead from the windows of the upper level of the granary and the roof but as all school children in Mexico know, El Pipila strapped a large flat rock to his sisal carrier and crawled to the wooden door of the Alhondiga with a torch in one hand and a jar full of flammable tar in the other. The bullets bounced off the rock ineffectually as he made it to the doorway. He broke the jar against the wooden doorway and lit it on fire.
The door burned down and the first rebels in to the Alhóndiga died by gunfire or impaled on bayonets. However, they were quickly followed by more waves of fighters. In less than a half hour, every criollo in the fort was dead. So frightening was the miners’ revenge that the leaders of the rebellion decided against next marching on Mexico City, for fear of what their troops would do to the city’s inhabitants. The four main rebel leaders were eventually captured and executed by the Spanish. Their heads hung from the four corners of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas in small metal cages, pour decouragé les autres, for a decade. When the rebels finally prevailed, the heroes were given proper burials.
Since that time the granary has served several functions, including being used as a local prison. Today, the building is a museum. We lucked out and happened to arrive the year that they were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence and the 100th anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution (they are not the same events, as they are in the U.S.). The month after we visited, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited and gave a short speech. It contains an impressive collection of pre-Columbian art and silver smithing. There are murals and memorials of the rebel leaders in bronze. I took some photos which I’m sure you would love to see.
I was so impressed by the building that I decided to try it for an exercise in architecture in Blender 3D. The detail isn’t nearly what it is in real life, but I think I captured the building’s essence. This is one that I may revisit later to add more textural touches. Let me know what you think. I encourage feedback, and I post these images knowing that in a year I will be a much better artist and I’ll cringe at how awful I used to be. If you’re interested in learning Blender 3D, a good resource to start with is Blender Guru. It’s run by Andrew Price and he posts excellent video tutorials. I’ll compile a list of the best Blender tutorials later but for now, definitely check out Andrew’s site.