The art of negative thinking

In between working on Opening Night (see progress below), I started and finished a scratchboard project that I was planning on doing later this year.

Originally, I had hoped to give the piece to my mother as a Christmas gift, but with her eyesight failing, this was something I wanted to make sure she could see. The previous two Christmases, I had given her a scratchboard piece of myself and one of my sister. This one below is my brother. His was easiest of all since he was dressed mostly in dark colors.

Scratchboard has been a style of artwork that I thought I wouldn't like, but have come to enjoy it thoroughly. It's very tedious, but it's also quite relaxing. I was amused the other day when I got it framed because the person who did it also does scratchboard. He said, "It's one of those mediums where you can sit down and work on it and it's six hours later and you don't even know it!"

That's so true.

For those unfamiliar with scratchboard, the surface is white clayboard affixed to what is essentially masonite board. The white surface is then inked, usually with black ink. The product, completely inked and ready-to-go can be purchased at almost any place that sells art supplies. The pre-inked biggest board I have found, however, is 11 x 14. There are other boards made that are larger in size, but those have to be inked by the artist and that can be a more difficult process than the actual scratching itself. 

Once you have the board and your final photo/sketch ready to go, you need to transfer it to the scratchboard. I overlay the surface with white transfer paper, then I put a copy of my photograph/sketch on top of that. From there, it's simply a matter of tracing the top image on to the surface of the scratchboard.

At that point, the real work begins. You are scratching away the black ink to reveal the white clayboard beneath the surface. I use several different tools, but the most precise and the one I use most often is an Exacto knife.

The other key thing in scratchboard is to think "negative." As an artist, you generally proceed from your darkest darks to your lightest lights. The old artist adage -- "Dark to light; Loose to Tight" doesn't apply in scratchboard. You want to find your LIGHTEST lights first, and work backward from there. Thus you are "negative" thinking or thinking in reverse, if you prefer.


Getting back to the piece of my brother, there's a couple of things I wanted to show about the process. The original is a photograph my mother had taken many years ago.

On the left, is the photograph
that I was working from.

As you can see, it's a
black & white. I probably
could have work on his
pants a lot more than
I eventually did, but I 
thought that it would 
detract from the overall
final product.

The piece on the right is the final piece, but you can see
where I circled some corrections I had to make on the board.

There's some thought from people who do not do scratchboard of "Eeeek! You really can't make a mistake with this!" That's not true. In fact, I accidentally spilled some rubbing alcohol in the upper left corner while doing this. In the course of wiping it off, I kind of liked the effect that it left on the surface. So, I tried recreating it in the lower right corner. It didn't work as well, and I knew I had to fix both sides. Very simple -- just re-ink the board where you need to make your fixes. Yes, you can see where the corrections are made, but that can be fixed as well.

You fix the corrections only after you are completely finished with the piece. And it's a very simple fix because you HAVE to do this anyway with any scratchboard piece that you do.

You have to seal it with a glaze of some sort. I prefer a product called Crystal Clear, made by Krylon. You simply spray that over the surface between 6-to-9 times. I vary the direction each time. The other thing I do is to make sure to appy an extra dose or two to the areas where the corrections have been made. As you can see from the final piece, the "errors" have been completely eliminated.

I plan to do a more thorough step-by-step demo of how to do scratchboard down the road, but a good majority of it was covered here!

Opening Night's WIP

I started this acrylic painting in earnest about three-to-four weeks ago now. If you recall from the previous post, I spent the first two weeks painting the image on to illustration board so I could see what colors to use and where and how to put the lighting in the painting.

There's been some changes made from the original

concept and there will be a few more before it is 
completed, but the essence of the work remains intact. 

The lighting in the lower right corner of the painting is just that. Light from a source that is "off painting." I hope that it will be more visually understandable once the final lighting gets put in from the main pole in front of the white Volkswagen. 

Added a couple more cars and they need to be more out-of-focus. The dogs in the front need to get cooler or darker on the left side -- away from the light. The background needs more blending. The front parking lot area between the dogs and the kissing couple may change in shading as well. Still much work to be done and its progress will be duly noted here. (I'm still not sold on my idea of the lighting in the lower right ... )