Gila Monster Wood Carving Walking Cane

I recently had the assignment of a Gila Monster and Werewolf Carving on a cane. This was a new carving for me and I had a fun time researching the lizard to learn the features for the carving and painting. Following the research I proceeded to make a quick clay mock-up of the carving to give me an idea of the any difficulties I would come across.

The carving started with a custom order of a larger cane to give me plenty of wood to work with in order to keep the structural integrity of the cane while giving a full life size carving of the Gila Monster.

The can was ultimately made out of mulberry wood and carved nicely. The center of the wood has a darker brown than the outer layers and gave the effect of a shadow under the lizard. I have attached a few photos of the process. The part that took the longest in this particular carving was the hundreds of small circular scales. Upon completion I painted the Gila Monster with patterns that I found on the internet and I painted the werewolf head black with 3 different shades of gray highlights.

More carvings can be found at http://creationcarvings.com/Gallery.html and http://handcarvedwalkingsticks.com/Gallery.html where I have galleries of some of my custom carvings.