Scratchboard 

The idea behind this work was to create a realistic drawing of a photo using scratchboard. I chose a photo of my cat and tried to copy every little line and hair accurately. I tried to capture his sleepy emotion and cute look. 

To make this piece I used scratchboard. Scratchboard is paper or posterboard with a thin layer of clay over it then layer of dark black india ink over that, I then scratched away the black india ink layer to expose the thin clay layer in a pattern that is realistic to the photo. 

I started by gridding the scratchboard and the printed photo of my cat so that I could more accurately copy the photo onto my scratchboard. Then I used different tools to just scratch away the ink. I started with the ear at the top and just worked my way across the grid to create an accurate drawing.