Help - animal tracks

[windsong]

Hi Everyone
Beings i can't not carve for a while.I have a few sticks that i took the bark off of.I thought i would try my hand at painting or wood burning so tracks on them.I have a cheap wood burner and some brushes.I need a pattern for bear tracks or some other type of track that i could put on the stick.
Thanks
VIC.

[Paul_Guraedy]

windsong, do a google "animal tracks" and you will find what you need. I recently decided to use some animal tracks in a carving I plan to do. This led me to many sites and a variety of tracks.

[Lightningbolt]

Glad to see that you're still finding ways to getting things done even when you can't carve. One of the most informative tracking sites I've found was this one: http://www.bear-tracker.com/ I was also impressed with all the helpful links that are listed for other resources.


About ten years ago one of my walking stick customers mailed me a torn out magazine article of a walking stick that had about 5 or 6 small animal tracks painted with black paint on it in a straight line with their names neatly written below them. It was the greatest idea of the decade for me and I've been putting them on my woodspirit walking sticks ever since. The tracks are very popular and people really like them! I tried woodburning at first but even with my Detail Master Woodburner I never was satisfied with the results and found that painting them on using black acrylic paint, lightly steel wooling, spraying with acrylic sealer, lightly steel wool, then gloss polyurethane works best for me.

Back then I was trying to come up with a quicker way to get the tracks on my sticks instead of having to sketch every single track which can become inaugurate after a while. At that time I just used the famous "Peterson Field Guide To Tracks" for my reference. Next I picked up a couple of those blank plastic stencil sheets from the craft department at Wal-Mart made by "Simply Stencils" by Plaid and the stock # is 28584 Uncut Blank.

On one of the sheet paper-sized blanks I divided it into 5 separate strips, then drew on 5 or 6 animal tracks in each strip. I made one sheet with larger tracks and the other with smaller tracks to best fit the diameter of any stick that I might be carving. I then cut out the tracks, which was a quite tedious chore, with my smallest detail knife with a soft pine block underneath and ever since I've had a very easy way to transfer several different strips of animal tracks to my sticks.


Just a few weeks ago I had a white ash stick and I just painted some tracks on it wrapping around the stick for about a foot, put on a leather wrist strap, sanded and layered up a nice glossy finish and that stick brought $42.00 at auction! Don't underestimate what tracks can do for your sticks! Great idea... keep at it!

[Lightningbolt]

I know that you were looking for tracks but thought that you could get some ideas from this website that I found this morning and spent WAY too much time looking around. This interesting lady is making various kinds of colorful walking sticks that are mostly done with just markers and no carving... and she's getting $160.00 for them. They are VERY detailed and they take her several weeks to create but are certainly worth a look!

Follow the links at the bottom of the page
http://www.mssticks.com/index.html

[Woodartist]

Well, I woodburn the tracks on the sticks. Just seems more natural than painting...personal preference. As was mentioned, there are a bunch of tracks on the web and I do a search of the animal followed by track. For example, for a bear I would do a search for "bear track." All kinds of tracks out there...haven't found a species where I couldn't find oneSmile I do get quite a few requests for them as well as the animals....FYI

[windsong]

Lightingbolt
You are always a big help if you don't mind it think i will try to put the tracks on useing the clear plastic?I will have to do some pratice before i try the woodburning.
Thanks
Vic.