By Dan Beard
Fig.
44.
The " Dancing Bear" is another original kite design especially for this book. It is made like a man kite but with shorter arms slid leg, and the addition of two extra sticks in the head for ears. The heavy black lines in Fig. 44 show the pine sticks that make the skeleton; the strings are the lighter lines. The construction is not difficult, and I think the reader can, if he lays the diagram in front of him, trust to his eye for the proportions. If not, he may call the spine or middle stick six feet or six inches long, then the two leg sticks will also be six feet or six inches each, the arm stick four and one-half, and with these figures he may guess at the size of the head, feet, and hands.
Fig 45.
The Dancing Bear.
The only real difficulty will be in painting the kite. Cover it with brown paper and print a copy of this page to have in front of you. With a brush and black paint, paint the claws, the black triangles of shadow under the arms and above the legs, a black collar around the neck. Leave a notch for the lower jaw, a black mouth having two teeth, the outline of the nose, two nostrils, two wrinkles, two round dots for eyes, and two black triangles for the inside of the ears. If it doesn't look a bear it will look like some sort of a beast.
As far as the likeness to a bear is concerned, after you have done your best in the artistic line, let it go; it will be a better-looking bear than some of the drawings that pass for this beast in current magazines and natural histories.
