Sometimes the right idea just refuses to spring to mind. I don't remember what I was thinking when I doodled the PPEsaurus, but I imagine I must have been thinking he could have been a mascot for the company's health and safety awareness campaigns. (PPE stands for "personal protective equipment.") I can't explain the hand growing from the tail. I will say that hands are very, very difficult to draw, especially for a terrible artist such as me.
Drawing hands is easy!*
ReplyDeleteAll you have to do is follow Byrne Hogarth:
https://goo.gl/R1XLND
Explaining hands is hard, especially when they appear in tail limbs.
A while back, I bought and half-regretted the purchase of a book on occult symbolism. It's the sort of reference you'd find on the library shelf of Fox Mulder, the pre-millennial winsome version, and not the decrepit one that's been through three movies and a flashlight chase with a lizard man in diapers.
So J.E. Cirlot has to say that handedness can be an issue. You've drawn a left hand, obviously sinister. My guess is you drew right-handed and used your left hand as a model, judging by the level of detail. So, I'd throw out concepts of dark left-handedness (sorry U.K. LeGuin, stop haunting me!).
Cirlot also says that the Roman /manus/ "signifies protection, authority, power, and strength", which is something I see as very positive and useful in a mascot for safety and awareness. Similar concepts appear in Egyptian, Pre-Colombian, Berber, Chinese, Islamic, and early Christian artwork.
That the hand is on the tail immediately brings to mind double entendres involving Kevin Spacey's love life. Cirlot doesn't stray far from that, asserting that the tail is phallic and that the hand is regenerative. I guess if you put them together...
I suppose you could argue that you've created an unlinked ouroborous (self-consuming snake), or dragon. Cirlot references "Hen to Pan" (The One, The All) in Codex Marcianus: "...the union between the cthonian principle as represented by the serpent and the celestial principle as singified by the bird (a synthesis which can also be applied to the dragon)." I fthink you put the hand on the tail because putting the hand on the shriveled T-Rex arm would look silly. Sillier.
*Captain, sensors indicate an unusually high degree of irony.