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Description
I'm late at getting this picture posted. Like, REALLY late. This is actually my NC State Fair craft competition entry from LAST year.

Anyway, I have no idea what type of wood this is made out of. I found the original five-foot-long branch amongst some debris washed up on a lake in a frisbee golf course (how's THAT for recall?) and it was already pretty worn and missing any leaves. Just about all of the spiral shape of the final piece was part of the original shape of the wood; I even left some of the weathered surface in places since I thought the texture looked more interesting that way (and of course that decision had nothing to do with the fact that it would let me avoid carving scales or feathers on most of the piece. Ahem.) It took me, oh, about seventeen years to finally decide what to do with the branch, but since it won a blue ribbon in the carved staff entry at the NC State Fair I think it was worth the wait.

The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl seemed like a good idea for another winged serpent. The hardest part was figuring out how to make the wing on his right side curve along the inside twist of the spiral. The shape that he's coiled around is an Aztec spear called a tepoztopilli, or the closest I could get to one using only a google image search.

Description
I'm late at getting this picture posted. Like, REALLY late. This is actually my NC State Fair craft competition entry from LAST year.

Anyway, I have no idea what type of wood this is made out of. I found the original five-foot-long branch amongst some debris washed up on a lake in a frisbee golf course (how's THAT for recall?) and it was already pretty worn and missing any leaves. Just about all of the spiral shape of the final piece was part of the original shape of the wood; I even left some of the weathered surface in places since I thought the texture looked more interesting that way (and of course that decision had nothing to do with the fact that it would let me avoid carving scales or feathers on most of the piece. Ahem.) It took me, oh, about seventeen years to finally decide what to do with the branch, but since it won a blue ribbon in the carved staff entry at the NC State Fair I think it was worth the wait.

The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl seemed like a good idea for another winged serpent. The hardest part was figuring out how to make the wing on his right side curve along the inside twist of the spiral. The shape that he's coiled around is an Aztec spear called a tepoztopilli, or the closest I could get to one using only a google image search.