The Dwarwen Brewery

This fantastic representation of a dwarven colony-sized booze frenzy was inspired by a XIIIth treatise on beer brewing [available here] This linocut depicts a dwarven brewery, a personal view of this poem.

Mainly because I like dwarves and i think the fantasy kind of dwarf encapsulates perfectly the light spirit that i thought might correspond to this XIIIth brewery. This contains the original verses in old french, describing all the malting and brewing process, to the final step of getting hammered and wanting to forget about it all.

The techniques

The sketch was originally drawn on transparent paper, then reported on the lino block, then inked with on the block. Once dried out, the block was carved with gouges: the linocut process itself. This process was particularly long, due to the massive amount of texts that is included in the orginal poem.

This was one of my earliest projects, one of my biggest occasions to learn and do mistakes. My skill level when i started was nothing close to the one i had when i finished it.

To print out something, the carved block was inked with a brayer and printing ink and the sheet of paper was pressed using a printing linocut press.