Scratch Art

Artist Statement:

This picture was taken sometime before the pandemic. It was a beautiful sunset on our way back home from the rink in Falmouth. (I’m a figure skater.) When I saw the image it reminded me of good times before Covid. We had to turn the image black and white for the reference image so the sunset colors kind of faded to this plain grey color but either way it was a cool image. The perspective of the image is from the front window of the car on the highway so the white highlights are the lights from other cars. I chose this image because I thought it would give a good scale of colors from light to dark. The lights from the other cars are the brightest while the complete shadows of the trees are the darkest. The horizon line was helpful to use in this image. I thought it would help make the spectrum easier to differ from shade to shade.

For this project we used all sorts of materials. We used a thin scratch board made out of a thin clay and paint. We used multiple utensils to scratch away. We used a wooden pencil shaped stick. Except for the fact that it did not contain the led it just had a pointy end to scratch the board. My favorite one I used was one that had a metal end that was in a curved shape. It was good for all sorts of details and ways of drawing. My least favorite was one that had almost a spikey felt bottom that didn’t make the right kind of scratch for what I was trying to do.

In this project there was really no going back once you do something because you can’t scratch the scratch board. I started by making sure I found the spots where I wasn’t supposed to scratch anything at all. Then I would work on what needed to be the darkest first and slowly move until I was doing the lightest. If I were to re do this project I would probably choose a different picture like an animal maybe… or something with more trees...Because I think that would make a better contrast between white and black and make the project more recognizable and more fun to look at. I also think doing something with fur could be cool because their are a lot of ways to use the tools to make a cool animal.