Mr. Whiskers — Aquatint Etching

A seal surfacing straight at you — whiskers fanned wide, nose forward, one flipper up behind, the water around him worked into soft grey ripples. He looks faintly unimpressed and I love him for it.

Aquatint etching on zinc. The image was bitten into a zinc plate with acid, a stage at a time. Each pass in the bath cut the exposed lines deeper, and areas I wanted to keep light got stopped out before the next one. The grainy tone in the water and his coat comes from the aquatint — a fine resin ground that lets the acid bite around thousands of tiny particles instead of clean lines.

• Original hand-pulled aquatint etching
• Image 7.75 × 9.75 inches on a 12 × 14.5 inch sheet — wide margins, ready to mat or float-frame
• Edition of 3 — the smallest run in the shop
• Signed, titled and numbered in pencil
• Ships flat, protected in a rigid mailer