Scratchboard

' This assignment required me to make a value strip as well as a final project of my choice, however, the medium was scratchboard and scratching tools. The value strip had no creative aspect, however, the final project did. I decided to draw my friend as my final project for this unit. The value strip was easy requiring only me to play around with the tools to get used to how they work. I wanted to treat it like paper for the first version of the final I did, so I scratched where there would be dark spots, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do, so after this, I did it the correct way. Other than that, the main idea that guided my artwork was the picture reference I was using of my friend's face.

As for materials, not many were used in this project, graphite to sketch, the scratchboard as the canvas, and the scratching tools were all that were needed. The reason why there aren't many tools needed is that the lines in the scratchboard are all made by one blade, even though they look to be different in size, all you need to do is tilt the blade to get this effect.

The process of this art piece is really simple. You take the reference photo and the scratchboard, then size them to be the same. You look at the reference and then scratch the white that you see in the picture. I decided to do my friend as the subject because I had nothing else I consider interesting to do, and I wanted to challenge myself with a portrait because that is something I need to work on. I tried to make the shades and folds in the skin evident, thus why it looks off compared to a normal portrait.