Finish the Tale: Urhu Arrives

Well, Wonderful Folks still following along... here he is, in all his serpent sage-y spiritually-healing erhu-playing musicianal glory, ready for the climatic scenes of the entire Halfland folktale series. Please notice the colors, very specific to this character, a marigold/Indian yellow/apricot confection, set off by the greens of his tail and growing things.

Notice too his turban ornamented with seed pods and his thoughts blooming as the music plays. He is as naked as a reptile can be, but only human in flesh on the left side of face and body. His hair painted wires for positioning, mixed with preserved grass and roots. The necklaces around his neck are a sort of long, slender pine cone, suggestive of both serpentine scales and plants, that I collected while they were still green and supple. Rounding them into shape, I allowed them to dry several months before preserving them with green and gold tinted medium to ornament the bare chest of the puppet.

His eyes, neither closed nor open, yet both. His smile neither happy nor knowing, blissful fool. His life is one of Silence and Music. Of Deserts and Oasis, barren yet constantly growing, as our own thoughts do, in the fertile gardens of our innermost minds. To emerge from within, extending ever outward from us, for all to see. Aren't all our thoughts growing somewhere, petals blossoming into flower, as they reach their full maturity?

Please welcome Urhu into Halfland, and stay tuned as the next posts will show more of this character's finishing and desert set up.