Robert Vargas had barely completed his first day of work on a Boyle Heights mural honoring Fernando Valenzuela on Tuesday evening when he heard the news that the beloved Dodgers pitcher had died at the age of 63.

“I still had my harness on,” Vargas said early Wednesday. “I wasn’t very far away (from the mural location). I was eating after I left there, so I returned to the wall to feel connected to the space I’ve already developed a relationship with as I go to paint this.

“Now it takes on even greater significance. It is still a celebration of a special life, but it now also becomes an altar.”

The Los Angeles-based artist discovered this immediately when he returned to his workplace in an apartment complex a block west of Mariachi Plaza.

“We had news crews already there,” he said. “And there were even friends who came by with marigolds, the flowers for the Day of the Dead altars.”

Valenzuela came from a small town in Mexico and became an MLB sensation with the Dodgers in 1981, when he sparked the cultural phenomenon “Fernandomania” and helped LA beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.

“I was a kid when all this happened and I just know that he is someone who is inspiring not only to Latin culture, but to many cultures,” said Vargas, whose mural is titled “Fernando Mania Forever.” “He’s just an inspiring figure who has done great things wherever he came from.”

Valenzuela had been a member of the Dodgers broadcast team since 2003 and was absent from the Spanish-language broadcasts toward the end of the regular season. On October 2, the Dodgers announced that Valenzuela had “left the Dodger broadcast booth for the remainder of this year to focus on his health.”

In a video filmed Tuesday evening at the future mural site and later posted to his Instagram Stories, an emotional Vargas struggled to come up with words to express how he felt about the passing of such an important figure to himself and so many others.

“I really hoped he would get out of his situation,” Vargas told The Times on Wednesday. “I really expected him to see (the mural). I just feel like part of my childhood is gone.”

He added: “I just put all the emotion into that wall.”

Vargas said he came up with the idea for a Valenzuela mural in Boyle Heights earlier this year when he painted a mural of current Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani on the side of the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo. Located just over a mile apart, the two murals are connected by the 1st Street bridge, as well as the stories of the players and the communities they represent.

Artist Robert Vargas stands in front of the Boyle Heights building where he paints a mural honoring Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela.

(Chuck Schilken/Los Angeles Times)

“It’s my way of promoting and advocating for unity and representation so that these communities can see heroes who look like them,” Vargas said. “At the same time, the entire city, under the umbrella of the Dodgers, can get behind this because it’s all about fostering the collective, which is really unity.”

The Ohtani mural is larger than life, to say the least, and Vargas has similar plans for his Valenzuela tribute. The wall has three panels, so Vargas will paint three separate images of Valenzuela pitching for an overall mural that he says will be more than 50 feet high and 75 feet wide.

“So now the 1st Street bridge is metaphorically the unity bridge because these two murals support and oppose each other,” Vargas said. “If you stand on the 1st Street bridge and look in either direction, you can see both murals.”

The unveiling will take place on November 1, a date Vargas originally chose because it is Valenzuela’s birthday and falls on Día de Muertos. It also so happens that if Game 6 of the Dodgers-Yankees World Series is required, it will take place that evening at Dodger Stadium.

That doesn’t give Vargas much time to complete the piece, especially considering he does all the painting.

“I’m painting it completely freehand,” says Vargas, who plans to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day until it’s finished. “My process is no grids, no projections, all with a brush, so it’s completely freeform. But when you paint with passion and intention for the greater good and to represent the community here, it’s like a stream of consciousness.”

Vargas said early Wednesday that he hoped to have nearly a third of the mural completed by the end of the day, stating that Valenzuela’s death “only increases its importance.”

“I’m seeing through it in a way that is healing now — not just for myself, but I really believe that the city can uphold this image,” Vargas said.

Vargas invites the public to come to the site after 1 p.m. Wednesday to help make marigolds from fabric and create the mural “the largest ofrenda ever.”

“I’m going to place these symbolic marigolds all the way around the building on the surface of the wall, like you would see in a Day of the Dead altarpiece,” Vargas said. “And that will frame the wall or surface while I paint the inside of it with the original design idea. It will be something that will eventually be removed. People can come and help build it. I think that will also be a form of healing for people.”