Billy The Kid

Originally published on Saturday, August, 30, 2008

This is a little carving I did off of that famous photo of Billy. The only change I made was to place his rifle in his hand instead of having him holding by the tip of the barrel with the butt on the ground. I like the way it turned out.
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Here’s an interesting piece of information on Billy that I always found amusing…it’s from Wikipedia:
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“While Billy the Kid was right-handed, it was widely assumed in the 20th century that he was left handed. This belief stemmed from the fact that the only known photograph of Bonney, an undated ferrotype, shows him with a Model 1873 Winchester rifle in his right hand and a gun belt with a holster on his left side, where a left-handed person would typically wear a pistol. The belief became so entrenched that in 1958, a biographical film was made about Billy the Kid called The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman. Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the familiar ferrotype was actually a reverse image. This version shows his Model 1873 Winchester with the loading port on the left side. All Model 1873s had the loading port on the right side, proving the image was reversed, and that he was, in fact, wearing his pistol on his right hip. Even though the image has been proven to be reversed, the idea of a left-handed Billy the Kid continues to widely circulate. Perhaps because many people heard both of these arguments and confused them, many hold the belief that Billy the Kid was ambidextrous. Many Billy the Kid sites describe him as such, and the idea of him being ambidextrous is still widely isdisputed.”
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I think it’s fun to try and render a carving from old photos of real people.

Comments welcome as always.