One of the last to finish was Sarah Parker, who was still putting the finishing touches to her cow Bulldozer.

Richard Turner caught up with Sarah at a warehouse in Castlefield just before the launch of Cow Parade and asked her about:

Bulldozer facts >>

...her design for Bulldozer: "He's a yellow cow based on the JCB digger. He has attached to his front end via his shoulders an actual JCB bucket. The cow is painted yellow with black horns, black tail and black hooves and he has got sleepy eyelashes on the front.

... other finishing touches: We're branding it. To tie in with the Bulldozer theme we're doing 'ZZZ' in the style of the JCB logo. It was just the idea we came up with and initially we thought it would be quite easy to produce but, as you can see, I'm one of the last ones here. still working on it!"

...why Bulldozer is lying down: The standing up cows all have udders, but the lying down cow conveniently has a tail over its udder, so it hides the fact that it's supposedly female.

.. the sponsor, Access Advertising: we do quite a lot of work with the council, we've got an advertising agency and so heard about cow parade before it kicked off and thought it was an exciting project to work on.

...any problems: I would like to have started this one again, once I'd learned all the learning curves that there were about the cow, like the paint techniques. At one stage I was ready to start afresh on a white cow because the paint blistered and all sorts of disasters happened.. but we've perservered.

...how to paint a cow: There's nothing to rest your elbows on when you're drawing straight lines, there's nothing to rest your wrist on so you can't keep a straight line. It sort of drops away inconveniently and the horns get in your way when you're trying to draw eyelashes... it's not the easiest shape to manoeuvre around!

... the blank canvas: They've got a primer on them already so they've got a white base so I just spray painted all the yellow on. Unfortunately though I made a mistake with the eylashes and then when I took all the black eyelashes off it took all the paint came off and it went downhill from there!

...how long it's taken: I've probably been doing it two to three hours three times a week so it's probably taken four days in total if i'd worked on it solidly.

...Cow Parade: I think it's fantastic! Getting more art into the city can never do any harm but it's really going to change the face of what's going on in Manchester.

...her favourite cow: Biggles - he's down at the airport with his fly away scarf and pipe in his pocket. He's absolutely beautiful!"

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