"Snake Eyes" Walking stick

[Coker]

Jim, A great job, with a lot of imagination. I really like the face with one eye pointing down.

[wayne(mj)]

Great job on the stick, I really like seeing them and making them. I tryed a snake stick , it is a lot of hard work. Mine didn't turn out very well at all. I would like to know what kind of wood you used. Agin nice stick.

[Jim Arnold]

Hi Wayne,

The wood is cypress, I used to farm it for sticks when I lived in Florida. Its easy to carve, holds good detail, is naturally resistant to moisture and little wood critters, and has a low weight to wood volume ratio. I think this is my first snake stick too. I tried it after I saw David Stenhly's (sp) article in the magazine. I used a router first off to cut out the snakes, cleaned that part up (sort of), then just had to deal with fitting in the faces after I knew where the snake was going.

Thanks for the comments everybody!

Cheers,
Jim

[Tommy Taylor]

That's a lot of fun to look at and a great imagination.Tommy.

[Camel]

Great looking stick! I've been doing simple woodspirits on walking sticks, but will have to try something like you did, it's beautiful.
Camel

[upcarver]

Great carving, but living in the deep south, I hate snakes! Wonderful workmanship, I envy your talent.

[BrandantR]

Those poor woodspirits look a little uncomfortable, and who could blame them? Great carving!!!

[Jim Arnold]

Thanks you guys! The idea was to integrate something that would connect the faces and tell a story. Look at that as a formula.....you carve a few of something (in this case its spirit faces), and then add something to tie them all together (in this case a snake that's giving rise to different facial/eye expressions). It could just as easily have been several 'green men' with their faces done in leaves with a vine wrapped up and down and around the stick connecting the faces, or the snake could easily be cut up and carved into a train with little cars cars rolling down the tracks winding around the stick and instead of faces, you could carve little destinations (towns, bridges, etc), along the way like a road map up and down the stick...how cool would that look!, maybe put a 'hatted' conductor's head on the top. For you guys reading this, let's hear YOUR variation on this formula....an object wrapping around the stick, top to bottom, in such a way that it ties together other carvings on it.

Imagination and creativity aren't hard....and everybody already has their own carving style. To put two and two together, do subject matter that you know. Everybody's life experiences and thoughts are different...expressing your own experiences and thoughts through your carving IS what creativity and imagination are all about, and its what will make your work stand out as being unique whether you're starting from scratch with a board or log or even if you're using a store bought rough out. When you start adding more then one character to a stick, or a scene, the door to storytelling is wide open...and it kind of automatically builds in interest to your work, the icing on the cake is when you can evoke some kind of emotional response from your work, like making people laugh.

Walking sticks are a lot of fun to do....most of the time I have no pre-conceived ideas at all, I just make it up as I go along.

Thanks again for the comments!

jim

[cannuckcarver]

Nice stick...Lots of carving in there...
Thanks for sharring...

[torpidhummer]

Great job Jim, great expression on very well carved project,thanks for sharing.
Oscar