Process of making the River Spirit from The Moonlit Princess. ๋࣭ ⭑☽︎⋆。˚
When working on an art piece, sometimes it's easy to become discouraged in the beginning, because many times we focus on the end product instead of what it takes to get there. Working on puppets is time intensive & takes many different steps. It teaches you to be present and simply enjoy the journey; the destination is the culmination of that.
It's humbling but also rewarding. That's what I love about puppetry.
I am proud to host a guest post by @ryin-silverfish about a rare JTTW puppet play from Quanzhou, Fujian province, China. The play is roughly from the Yuan to early-Ming period, meaning that it predates the 1592 edition of the novel. There are parallels with the finished work, pointing to a possible influence, or at the very least, they borrowed from the same source. But there are many differences as well. The most surprising for me are:
Sha Wujing is the one who transforms into a white horse.
Erlang becomes one of Tripitaka's disciples after being demoted for flirting with a heavenly maiden.
An example of modern Quanzhou string puppetry depicting a battle between Sun Wukong and Princess Iron Fan.
Ngl I could never remember her clothing pattern until today (just repeated the colors names in my head several times until I got them right 😭)
Honestly, I always thought to myself that Sally's design was kind of hard for me to draw but as I was drawing her today, I realized that...the only thing I actually struggled with was just remembering the colors patterns. Still love her tho. ❤️
the thing about yonderland is that its so deeply weird and there's no explanation for it and there doesn't need to be. it's just a really strange show. and it's hysterical and heartfelt yeah but mostly it's like. what's the silliest group of guys we could come up with? okay now do that 50 more times. and also it'll take a lot of setting up and costuming and shit for a 30 second joke. and it rips.
Julie: Well, believe me, Frankie, I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid...and I went ahead anyway.