This Huliraaya is an artist too!

For Balu Nagendra, who is set to make his big-screen debut with Aravind Kaushik’s

Huliraaya

, the opportunity seems to have helped explore not just his acting skills, but also that of an artist.

Director Aravind tells us, “The role of Huliraaya was specifically designed keeping Balu’s acting abilities in mind. But, there is another side of his — a face not known to many outside the industry circles. Balu is a wonderful artiste — a painter.”

In the film Huliraaya, the character that Balu plays happens to be a painter too. He is a dreamer, a vagabond and loves painting images on the rocks and wherever possible in the forest he lives in.

“While one could have got an art director to paint all the images required in shoot and later got Balu to pretend he was drawing it onscreen. But we got Balu himself to paint all such images in the film. There are many such scenes wherein the lead character is shown drawing, and all those images have been created by Balu himself. As a director, it was great to shoot scenes involving the lead actor painting as they are authentic and natural,” he adds.