Folk Art Pig-Part 15- Photos

The body of the folk art pig is pretty much complete.  Now it is time to begin working on the details that really make it look like a pig.  I need to add the tail, ears, and hooves.  Today I am blogging on creating the tail. 

Some pigs have really curly tails.  Some pigs tails are more kinked than curly.  Some breeds of pigs have longer tails than other breeds.  I don't really remember what the tail of my neighbor's pig, Bacon, looked like.  I was more focused on making sure that the front end wasn't going to take a bite out of me.  So, I had to wing it on the tail.  I decided my pig would have a curly tail.

Once I had the tail shape in mind, I had to come up with a way to make the shape usable on the folk art pig.  I started with a piece of heavy twine.  It was close to the right thickness to start with and it was bendable without having a sharp edge.  I experimented with various configurations until I came up with a shape that looked like I wanted it to look.  Then it was a matter of finding some way that would allow the twine to hold the shape while allowing me to work on it.  I could have just taped it to the work table and worked on one side at a time, but I'm running into a time crunch.  I came up with an idea that would allow me to work on it all at once.  I had a bottle of glue that was approximately the size that I wanted the tail to be when it was finished.  I taped the top and bottom ends of the twine to the bottle of glue. (Photo 1) 

Once the twine was taped in place.  I covered the twine with a fairly thick coat of white multipurpose glue. (This is a different type of glue than the bottle shown in the photo above.)  I let the glue soak in and dry overnight.  I'm not sure that this step was necessary.  However, it did help the twine hold the shape so that it did not change shape while I was adding the paper maché.  Before removing the tail from the bottle of glue I added two layers of paper maché.  (Photo 2)

After the layers of   paper maché had dried, I removed the tail from the bottle of glue and taped it to the rump of the pig.  Once the tail was taped to the pig I added more  paper maché over the tape and down the tail.  (Photo 3)  The tail actually needed multiple layers of tape and  paper maché.  The flexibility of the section of twine that had been covered by tape and had not been pretreated with glue and paper maché kept causing the paper maché to crack.  Perseverance finally won out though and the tail stayed in place.

Next blog post will be on creating the hooves.