Considering the general quality of his sculptures, I don't think he'd be able to do that, but it would have made for a nice touch. It was a surprisingly bleak ending, even though what preceded it was pretty macabre. Maybe someone else could have picked up the torch and covered him with clay.

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I don' think Walter was smart enough to fake his own death.
He couldn't even fake his own life!
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I don' think Walter was smart enough to fake his own death.
Get on up.

Dick Miller has said in interviews that the short (one week!!) schedule meant single takes and Corman pushing them to speed things up and that the hanging was meant to show him completely encased in clay.
It's so much better if he's just partially smeared with clay, though, more ghoulish and realistic. One last desparate failure.
Get on up.

In fact the end sequence seems botched.
"Walter" says "I know where I'll hide. Where they will never find me!"
and exits screen right. Minutes later (based on the closeness of the chase sequence preceding it)the group bust in the door and stop, shocked by what they see, the camera pans right to a head and shoulder shot of "Walter" hanging by his neck with clay partially smeared on his face and body - end titles.
Dick Miller has said in interviews that the short (one week!!) schedule meant single takes and Corman pushing them to speed things up and that the hanging was meant to show him completely encased in clay.
Come on lads, bags of swank!

Possible
I just watched a Scorsese movie "After Hours", a New York-style comedy of errors where a guy on a date winds up being hunted through SoHo by a vigilante mob convinced he's a burglar. It ends when a sculptress encases him in plaster of paris, the resultant statue is then stolen by the real burglars, who accidentally drop it uptown outside the guy's office building.
Dick Miller makes a guest appearance as waiter at a diner, and there's a couple of young women who also indulge in making human-shaped sculptures. In a shared movie-reality world, he could be Paisley, and those could be his daughters.

Hmmm, yeah. thanks for the response and insight!

So nobody would have thought to take a pulse? Somebody probably would have noticed when he was being embalmed. Plus he would have had to make the sculpture in, what, five minutes? And we already know he has NO talent, so for him to succeed so spectacularly in such a short time would have been illogical.
As you say, thematically it would have been interesting, but practically it doesn't hold up for more than thirty seconds. I think the ending as-is is appropriate because he finally gets what he always wantedimmortality through art. "A stone is a stoneor it's a sculpture. A person is a personor he's an artist."