Folk Art Pig-Part 17-Photos

Today I'm blogging about creating the ears of the folk art pig.  The description and photos show here are the end result of a long process of determining how to create the ears.  Prior to this I had tried different approaches such as origami and circular ring bases for the ear.  It really took a lot of saying "What is wrong with this picture?" to come up with something that would look close to what I wanted. 

The first part of the problem was determining what shape I wanted for the ears.  Pigs ears, like a dog's ears lift and move in response to what is happening around them.  Pigs can lift their ears up into a full trumpet shape to fully tune into sound when they are alarmed.  When pigs feel content and safe, they tend to curl their ears all the way down to block out noise.  Pigs that are feeling playful or interested in something non-threatening have their ears half way up.  So the first choice I had to make about the ears was to determine the emotional state of the folk art pig.  I decided I wanted my pig to be happy and friendly.  That meant that the pigs ears had to be up and alert, but also folded slightly at the tip of the ear. 

Now that I had the ear shape determined, I had to figure out how to construct the shape.  Each ear was constructed in three parts.  The main portion of the ear, was a triangular shape.  The bases of the triangles were set on a curve.  (Photo 1)  The triangles were cut out of scrap cardboard and taped to the head with masking tape. (Photo 2)  I scored the cardboard with scissors to make it fold over to create the fold of the ear.  These sections of the ears were given two coats of paper maché in order to make it rigid enough to support the next section of construction.

The second part of the ear construction was to create the fleshy part at the front of the ears.  I cut a cardboard shape that sloped down from each side of the ears toward the center.  These pieces were taped into place with masking tape.  Then these sections of the ears were covered in paper maché.  (Photo 3)

Things still did not look quite right.  I realized I needed to fill in some of the blank space inside the ears.  The insides of a pig's ear slope inward to the ear canal.  I added strips of cardboard inside each ear.  Each strip was slanted in towards the center.  The strips were taped to the ear with masking tape and then covered with another layer of masking tape to give it some extra stability.  (Photo 4)  The inside of the ears was covered with two layers of paper maché.  Once that was dry, I covered both ears with an additional layer of paper maché.  

Next blog:  Painted and finished.