Shaman Staff-Part 2-Fitting the Story to the Walking Stick-Photos

Registration marks keep the lines even.

Fitting the story to the stick.

Here I am again at the beginning of a new project.  As I blogged last time, the walking stick will have a written story line as well as decorative wood burning in tribal patterns.  It seems to me that getting started is always a slow proposition.  Before I can get moving I have to have at least some vision of what I expect the outcome to be.  I find that this idea may evolve over time as the piece progresses.  I try to find some mid-point between what I want and what new ideas come along as the piece develops. 

My first objective was to develop the story line.  Creating the story is one thing.  Having the story fit on the stick is quite another.  Both criteria have to be met to have the story come out successfully.  You can't have the story too short, or it just ends somewhere in the middle of the stick.  You can't have it too long, or you run out of stick before the story ends.  It is a matter of editing and testing until you get the story to a point that you have a cohesive story that ends close to the end of the stick. 

Another consideration is Font size and style.  The story is going to be wood burned into the walking stick.  The size of the letters needs to be large enough that you can burn them into the stick easily.  The style of the Font is also going to need to be one that can easily be transferred and wood burned into the stick.  At one point I considered runes because of their linear marks could easily be burned into the stick, but then, very few people would be able to read the story.  (I actually have made a project using runes.  I'll post a picture of that at some time during this project.)  So I experimented with different sizes and styles of Fonts until I found one that would work. 

Of course with the larger size Font, even a sentence was too long to fit on one line.  I had to cut each line apart and tape it back together.  All the sentences would have to be taped together and wrapped around the stick  in order to make sure that it was going to fit on the stick properly.  The strips were different sizes as some letters were capital letters and some letters had portions that dropped below the line.  I used registration marks to get all the lines to match up properly.  (See photo)  I also numbered the lines so that I could keep them in order.  Although the strips are all taped together for the test, they will be removed and separated after that.  If I left the strips taped on, they could be damaged as I am working on wood burning the stick.  Each section will be transferred to the stick and wood burned individually.  The registration marks and numbered strips will come in handy then.

Once I had the story printed out, it was on to editing.  I had worried that my story was going to be to short in its initial form.  It turned out to be several lines too long.  I had to cut a number of sentences.  That changed the story slightly but it still gets the point across.  After that, I renumbered the lines. 

At the moment it looks as if there won't be much room for decoration, but that is an illusion.  Only the words will be burned on.  The paper surrounding it will no longer be in the way.   It is not just a case of fitting the story to the stick.  You also have to check to make sure that there aren't going to be any surprises such as knot holes in the way of a word.  Fortunately this stick is rather smooth, and did not present any major problems.

That is as far as I have gotten on this project so far.  Although it seems like such a small amount, it really is a very significant portion of the project.  I will begin transferring the first section onto the stick shortly.