Every once in a while an interesting piece of carving material comes into my possession in an unexpected way. A neighbor offered me this old cow hip that he found in his barn, which is a tremendously exciting material to be able to work with. It's not often that I'll have access to a cow's hip bone. In addition, the age of the bone makes it ready to carve immediately, as the flesh and marrow have long since rotted away from even the deepest, thickest parts of the bone. It's been sitting in my basement for a few years now, waiting for me to come to a decision about what to do with it.
Bone can be tricky, especially if it's a skeletal part that I'm not familiar with. The density of bone changes throughout, and it can be exceedingly thin in some areas. The interior is a spongy-looking, frequently quite rigid material that provides a nice contrast to the flat white of the outer surface. It's important to be especially deliberate in how deep you carve when working with a piece like this because the exterior bone layer can be especially thin.
The final product will be painted (in part).
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