At a show hosted by the Pomona Valley Art Association, one of my pieces received the Ampersand Sponsors Award which was a sample of the boards that they make for painting, pastels and scratchboard. I quickly got caught up with the scratchboard, it offered the biggest challenges.
I have taught students how to use scratch techniques on ink covered foil and paper but this board was a new animal. I researched ready-made tools, and made my own tools. I looked at techniques used by other artists and found that the works I admired the most were constructed through happy accidents, unexpected tools, and some very creative problem solving. So, I took a shot at it and I think my first attempt came out pretty decent.
What I especially like about this medium are the textures that I can create as I carve away at the inked surface. Most pencil techniques work well, as well as cross-hatching, but they have a "3-D" quality to them that adds it's own depth to the work. I took my time with the drawing and the completed work was over 50 hours of labor (I'm a process person!), the board is 11"x14" and is pre-inked. Ampersand makes a clayboard for scratching that allows you to start off white and add your own black ink in smaller areas. I like working from black to white, managing the value changes can be a difficult task but if I mess it up, the surface can be "repaired" with black India ink and redone.
