Scratchboard

Artist Statement:

When searching for a photograph to use as my reference photo, I knew I wanted a photo that had a mix of whites, blacks, grays, and everything in between–I wanted various tones and shades. I then found a photo that I took of these clouds before a storm in the sky and I found the tones and shades that I was looking for. The photo ended up being a good photo for the scratch board project because I could use the range of shades and tones to guide my scratch marks and how hard I scratched, how many scratches I did etc.

The materials that I used were the black scratchboard, the red tool, the brown tool, and then the end of a screwdriver that I found to be an excellent tool for creating the strongest highlights in the clouds. I loved scratching on the paper and then after I created the clouds up-close, I stood back and realized that it actually began to look like the clouds and there were visible dimensions that I could see because of the various tones and shades created, so I thought that was really cool to see after only looking at it up-close.

The process was interesting to see because although it took hours to create shades that didn't look rushed or just scratched without effort, the cloud image came together in the end–although in the middle I was a bit nervous because I couldn't see the cloud vision yet, but as I kept on working, being attentive to to matching the shades, I began to see the cloud outline and it began looking more like my photo reference which was exiting.