Introduction to Scratchboard
by Shirley A Schult

What do needles, ink and clay bord have in common? They're all used in the art of scratchboard- a technique which enables the artist to create delicate and detailed designs.

There are two main surfaces normally used for this form of art and they are the claybord white and the claybord black. Basically it is a hard board covered with Kaolin Clay. The black version is than covered with a coating of black India Ink. You can lightly draw or trace your design onto the surface and than using a sharp tool begin to scratch your design into the claybord by removing bits of the black ink to expose the white clay underneath. Using this technique one can add incredible detail work to their art. In this article I will mostly concentrate on using the black claybord, though the white can also be used, but a little different approach is applied to achieve desired effects. Racoon

Tools you will need to start: A claybord panel, sharp tools such as a needle, tip of an old quill pen, razor blade, oil free steel wool, small wire brush, a clean cloth, or any good tool that will enable you to scratch the type of design you are trying to achieve. I also found that either a white kleenex under your hand helps keep the oils from your hand and fingers from transferring to the black claybord. The only other consideration here is if you want to add color to your finished design, some people love the white and black contrast and leave it as finished, others like to add color. For adding color to one of these images I suggest using transparent colored inks, I use the ones by Higgins.

Here is a basic outline of the steps I use in order to achieve my art works on this wonderful board. First of course I decide on what subject matter I want for my design such as an animal, landscape, floral etc. Next I either lightly draw a sketch with a white Derwent pastel pencil or trace it lightly using white tracing paper. Now I lightly start to scratch in my design, I start with light scratches than I go over the ones that I want more enhanced and to stand out more, I use similar styles that one would use as if drawing in charcoal or pencil, such as cross hatching, fine lines, contour lines etc. I pay close attention to direction, example is fur or feathers, they must be going in the proper direction if the finished product is to look realistic. When I have achieved the proper tonal values and I feel the scratching phase is complete I start mixing some of my transparent inks in little cups, I dilute them with water to get various shades and also add several inks together to come up with even more variety for my colorization process. I use old brushes to put light colored ink washes where I want color, sometimes I may add several layers of these washes to come up with the proper color shade I am trying to achieve. When I am all done with the colorizing process I dust the art work off with a brush removing any lint and residue, than I give it several light spray coatings of fixative or varnish. The nice advantage I want to point out is it is ready for framing now and needs no glass covering as do works usually done on papers.

Nature and fantasy art- prints & originals for sale. Scratchboard, paintings, and sketches http://www.themadpainter.com/

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Introduction to Scratchboard by Shirley A Schult

Introduction to Scratchboard
by Shirley A Schult