There's a lot of Elephant to paint, and it will need at least a primer/undercoat and top coat. Painting an Elephant is a lot more fun with friends and Nic and Nic have volunteered to help. All I have to do is find some paint and decide on paint and colour. Prefereably a cheap paint, as this project is now quite over budget. I have a look under the house, and find a tin of blue grey colour. I try painting some onto a plywood off cut to see what it looks like. While this is drying I have a look at the head, the filler we'd put on the screw holes just before transporting it home had fallen out in transit. I go to where I last saw my tub of instant filler. The filler isn't there, but my foot bangs into a paint bucket. The colour is 'Fossil', which is the perfect name, and the perfect brownish/white colour.
The Elephant needs to be sanded before painting, but it is hard to dismantle on my own. While I'm waiting to Nic and Nic to arrive I start on modification of one of the tusks into a side blown horn. Making an end blown horn would be quite easy, but I decide on the side blown partly because it is a traditional instrument, but mostly because kneeling down and blowing into an Elephant tusk will look far too silly. I drill a hole large enough to fit a trumpet mouthpiece. It makes a sound very much like a conch shell but looks quite silly more like a piece of drug paraphernalia that a musical instrument. So I chop the end off the mouthpiece, make a larger hole, glue the mouthpiece in place and end up with something very much like the traditional side blown horn.
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| Side blown horn. |
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| Nicole sanding |
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| Nic and Nic, the ace painting team. |
The garden takes on a slightly surreal quality with Elephant bones drying in a daliesque fashion.
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