New Lino Print - Otter Feast

A new lino print of a trio of hungry otters - well not that hungry as they have a pile of fish to eat. I have only ever seen an otter footprint, never a glimpse of the elusive creature although apparently they do live right here in waterways of Bristol, urban otters! This was a fun little lino print to carve, especially the little pile of fish bones - somehow the perfect subject matter for lino. I have added the Otter Feast to my online shop HERE if you are interested in any more info about it (size, paper etc) so pop over and have a look.

Beetle lino prints

For the last couple of years I have been drawing in our local Museums Natural History department whenever I get the chance.   The collections there are huge, varied and really inspiring.  Drawing the birds is my usual habit, but recently the curator had beetles out and I couldn't resist spending an afternoon drawing those too.

I found them tricky, I am no expert on beetle anatomy and they have so many parts - legs, antennae, etc that have to be in the right place.  My drawings would never be any use as an identifying guide but I had so much fun making them and learnt a lot too.

I couldn't resist making some lino prints from the drawings - keeping the slightly misplaced legs and wobbly lines where they were in my original drawing and using the scientific labels as part of the design.

Carving the lino block was tricky as I couldn't mis-cut anything - all those letters and legs!  It worked though, all in place and so in this picture you can see me peeling back the paper from one of the first prints I burnished from the block - success.

Hopefully this will become part of a small series of lino prints as it was great to work on.