The Pig Hunter!

My apologies to all animal lovers!  This piece was a request from my niece Alice, who is a Nanny during the week and a Pig Hunter at the weekend! These are West Coast feral pigs and can be quite dangerous to hunt.  Alice only a wee thing but very brave, so I made a wee doll.  Alice wanted something to encapsulate this time of her life!  She is quite pleased with herself!

The head is made from velour and coloured with Hybrid Gel pens and white acrylic paint highlights.

 The body is made from cotton and is needlesculpted.  She has no fingers because of her 'pleased with herself' pose.  She wears a knit ribbed teeshirt.  Her shotgun is made from two straws, balsa wood wrapped in masking tape and painted with a bronze paint that came out looking like silver!  I made a wire trigger handle attached with hot glue and wrapped in masking tape, so I could attach it with cotton in place for a casual look.

 Her Jeans are also her legs, cut to shape from stretch denim (recycled), as are her boots.  The legs are stuffed with doweling for armature, wedged into her boots, which are weighted to make her stand.  I made some pseudo socks around the tops of the boots and stitched some heavy thread for laces.

I designed the poor old pig in his demised state, from some brown synthetic fabric I had (recycled) and used a brown pastel as well as black prismapencil to deepen the shadows in the needlesculpting of his body.  He has white calico tusks.  Rather pleased with the way he turned out, but hoped his legs would all droop to the ground, but  because of his belly, they didn't. Never mind - he really looks like rigor mortis has set in!  I luckily had some rope-like string to tie his front hocks to make it look authentic!