Here are the latest developments from my Women of Winter project, following the completion of a Befana marionette.

This is the progress on Frau Perchta. I used an old image of a costumed player of Perchta as my influence, and decided to give her sickly yellow skin and huge gnarly hands, which I feel is a bit of a naturally-developing look for my puppets. At least, this is what I did for Krampus and Gryla.

I’d like to include a blade and needle so that she can slice open some bellies and sew them back up again but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.

I also gave her an iron nose which is a feature that appears sometimes with her character. Not sure what that means but to me it gives her an unexpected additional weird quality.

Well, she’s obviously not finished yet, but it’s been fun making her so far and I’ll keep plugging away. The head and hands are made of super sculpey, and the rest of the body parts are air dry clay.