". . . a brush with nature"

The last few weeks my focus has been on entering shows, packing paintings, shipping and/or delivering pieces to galleries or exhibits. Such is the business of art. I have also been doing quite a lot of scratching. Yes, I did say scratching, but I am not referencing my mosquito bites which are numerous and quite annoying already this year. I am talking about my return to the art of scratchboard.

I love the medium but have been away from it for a time as I worked on paintings in pastel or acrylic earlier this year. During the month of May I went back to scratchboard and created four new pieces with an animal as my subject. These four works are straight forward black and white scratchboard compositions – no color or backgrounds added (except a very minimal one on "Polar Siesta.") I love the strength and directness achieved when scratchboard is approached this way.

For these pieces I chose reference photos that I felt would translate successfully into a strong black and white composition. I cropped the image to best fit my desired format then transferred my drawing to my Ampersand Scratchbord panel using white transfer paper. Then the fun begins!

Scratchboard is “subtractive” in nature meaning part of the ink will be removed. You can use any tool you like to in order to do this, so be creative. Think out of the box. Most artists start out with the basic set of tools specifically for scratchboard (available at many art supply stores) only to find they want to be able to achieve more effects. Anything that can be used to remove the ink is worth trying, but I am sure each artist will eventually find a few favorites they keep returning to. Several of mine include a fiberglass brush, parallel line tool and scalpel blades all of which can be seen in the photos shown here. Many artists also use steel wool, X-acto Knives, dental tools and the like to accomplish the effects they want. Since most tools are relatively inexpensive it is a good idea to simply replace them when they start to show signs of wear or become dull.

I recently read that "scratchboard is more like etching than excavating." This is so true and important to remember. This art takes a gentle touch and may require re-scratching an area several times before the desired level of lightness (whiteness) is realized. It is much better to go softly into it than to remove too much early on. Small corrections can be made, but it is not easy to “go back” and fix a larger misstep.

Another tool I recently discovered is the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen B warm grey V. This pen is great for touching up a small area when you do need to add a bit of ink back into your piece. The color more closely matches the ink on the Ampersand Scratchbord panel making small corrections hardly visible – especially after spraying the completed piece with an archival varnish. I prefer to use Golden Archival Varnish (Satin) for this final step.