This lesson is on carving a fantasy buffalo with feathers instead of long  shaggy mane hair. I got the idea for this from a book titled The Great Book of Tattoo Designs by Lora S. Irish. The way he drew the long hair on the buffalo in that book reminded me of leaves or feather, so I decided to give it a try.

I did this project on an 8 X 10 piece of 5-6 ounce vegetable tanned leather.  For projects that will be embossed like this one, you can use leather closer to the belly of the hide because you want the leather to stretch. If you want some sort of background scene around the buffalo, you would want to cut your leather 11 X 14, or larger.

Case your leather. I have been using a  little Pro Carve in a small spray bottle of water. I wet the back of the leather fairly well, then the front. Proper moisture content is something that is hard to explain. Once the leather has been wet, you need to let it start to dry. Once it is back to it’s original color, but still cool to the touch, it should be ready to start tracing your pattern.