Today I dedicated myself to drawing and painting badgers.

This week I have been asked by two separate people if I had any badger paintings to sell.

I only have one which isn’t brilliant and was painted years ago.

Since then I hope I have improved my painting  a bit and so I decided to focus on these gorgeous creatures.

Here are my rough sketches and the progress I made today to complete this gentle portrait.

I used a variety of media to warm up to this animal.

I used Wolff’s carbon sticks on Grey toned Strathmore paper.

Then I did some head shapes in watercolour on stretched 100% cotton rag hot pressed paper.

The eye was something I really wanted to get perfectly and so I did some slow and accurate studies of one eye in pencil.

Finally I did some very quick and jagged Sharpie black pen sketches.

All I wanted to do was feel my way with my tools around the shapes and markings.

It was fun to do even though a lot of the results are not very good. This is what warm ups are for!

I wanted it to have wabi sabi qualities and left a lot in the mist and only placed hard accents here and there.

Here are some progress shots from the murky indistinct beginnings onwards.

I wanted the badger to emerge from a blurry purple grey landscape – possibly on a frosty late autumn morning such as today’s.

To shop this print at my online gallery please click the image below!

What winter animals are you currently observing where you live?