Developing an Armature for Folk Art Pig-First Photos

I mentioned in my last blog that I was making this folk art pig for a burner event and that I had added a few challenges for myself.  One of the challenges was that I did not want to use any wire or metal in the construction of this project.  The main reason for choosing to construct without metal is because when the object is burned, bits of metal and wire will be left behind.  At best, that is a dirty, ashy clean up.  At worst, some of the metal is missed and someone could step on it and get hurt.  I know that where the burn will take place children play in the yard in bare feet or flip flops.  So I decided to do without any metal or wire of any kind.  It adds a degree of difficulty to the project due to its size.  However, art is all about solving problems and I've come up with solutions to the problem.

For a project of this size I needed a substantial armature. Ordinarily I would use chicken wire or hardware cloth.  The armature needed to be able to hold the substantial weight of the pig and it needed to be waterproof enough that it would not break down from the moisture of the paper mache.  The body of a pig is somewhat barrel shaped so that is where I started.  My first attempt, making a barrel shape from poster board did not go well, so there is no photo of that.  I realized that it needed some internal support.  So my photos start with making the ribs for internal supports.

Pigs are not exactly round, but I needed to start round and make ribs that had enough give to them that they would flatten slightly to an oval shape.  I first made a round template the size I wanted the body of the pig (twelve inches). I used a large protractor, but could also have traced around a plate or used a string and pin.  There are always a number of ways to accomplish a task.

Since this is a burner project, I didn't want to spend a lot of time measuring.  I cut strips of poster board the width of the yard stick. I joined pieces together with masking tape to make them long enough to wrap around the circle.  To make the rib strong enough to support the weight I wrapped strips around four times and then covered them with masking tape.  The masking tape adds another layer of support and also adds some waterproofing to the ribs. I made five ribs in all.

I don't want to make this post too long or add so many photos that it is hard to load, so I will stop here for today.  Next blog will show the next phase of developing the armature.