Sleeping Badgers

'Sleeping Badgers'

'Sleeping Badgers' is a single colour linocut, printed onto 145gsm Zerkall paper. I am interested in notions of duality, internal and external, above/below etc. 'Sleeping Badgers’ depicts a trinity of adorable badgers amongst the roots of a tree, referencing this duality with a distinct above and below ground motif.

Like many of my prints the first stage was to draw out the design. I created a rough sketch in my sketchbook which was further refined as I traced the image, and then refined again after I transferred it to the lino. The red colour here is from the lino having been stained with watered down acrylic paint (before transferring the image) to help the carved areas to stand out more.

I used my Pfeil tools (pictured here) to carve out the design. This was a particulalrly detailed design with lots of fine lines, so I used some of my finest tools including 11/05, 11/1, and 11/2. Carving out the wriggly worms was paricularly fun - how many can you see?

This print was printed on my Gunning Etching press - you can see it coming of the press in the video below.

And here is the finished print. Printed on to 145gsm Zerkall paper with Cranfield Caligo safe wash oil-based ink.

This will eventually be a limited edition of 50 prints.

Paper size: 38 x 27cm
Actual print size: 31 x 20cm