Ampersand Panels

I’ve just added a rabbit to my list of scratchboard subjects. The soft and mottled fur screamed to be scratched and creating this 7” x 5” panel was great fun. Ampersand Art’s Scratchbord™ is an ideal surface for realistic artwork of animals and birds, allowing textures and details to be beautifully rendered. My very talented artist friend Laurie asked me to create a scratchboard painting for her from a photo she took while visiting Australia. Laurie is an award-winning painter, … Read More

Months ago I set my sights on entering the 2022 International Society of Scratchboard Artists (ISSA) annual exhibition, which will be held in Florida this year. I’ve been exploring new techniques for scratchboard and honing my skills with what has become a favorite media. For this stiff competition, I really wanted to push the envelop, with a large and very detailed artwork. A new challenge! THE INSPIRATION Several times this summer Rick and I have enjoyed boating with good friends … Read More

I love scratchboarding and I love chocolate, so I decided to combine the two in creating How Sweet It Is. I painted a big watercolor of chocolates years ago, Decadence, and it has always ranked among my personal favorite paintings. Even though this is a very very small artwork – just 4.5″ x 3″ – it took forever! The image was created with tiny marks into the black surface, slowly working my way throughout the panel. To be able to … Read More

    You win some, you lose some. The stakes weren’t too high; I missed out on ‘bragging rights and a free t-shirt.’ But I gained a whole lot more. The International Society of Scratchboard Artists (ISSA) just selected artwork for their commemorative 2020 Exhibition t-shirts… and mine wasn’t chosen 🙁 I created “Anna’s Fairy Duster” with realistic expectations. I knew anything I entered would be a long shot to win, with my limited experience of just two years doing … Read More

  Beautiful ruby throated hummingbirds – the most common species which migrates to Eastern North America – visit our feeders from early April through the beginning of October. I’ve done numerous paintings of them, in watercolor and acrylics, and it was time for me to try one on scratchboard. As demonstrated in my previous post, I created a border design on a 14″ x 11″ black Scratchbord™, using colors to match those I planned to use in the artwork. For … Read More

Through the wonders of technology, here’s a quick time-lapse of the creation of my new scratchboard “Locked In Time.” ‘Hard to believe that it took weeks, not seconds, to create this artwork! Learning to add a mini-video to my blog is one of my many quarantine-time activities. Perhaps I’ll get more adventurous (and better) in the future and maybe even add audio. Click on the photo to launch the slide show. On this 10″ x 8″ panel I aimed to … Read More

My bearded irises have flowered beautifully this spring, inspiring me to paint them. The delicate petals are ruffled and nearly transparent, with one group growing upward and the other down. Their feathery ‘beards’ and tightly folded buds provide additional interesting shapes and values. As usual, I took far too many reference photos, being especially drawn to those with backlighting. I wanted to give a different twist to painting an iris, and I was inspired by the paintings of an artist … Read More

If you’d like to see some samples of the world’s most amazing scratchboard art, I’ll take you there! The International Society of Scratchboard Artists (ISSA) has posted its 2020 Online Show, and I am in awe of the creativity and artistic talents of scratchboard artists. As a new member at the “active” level of the ISSA, I was allowed to enter two of my scratchboards into the annual non-juried show. I entered “Purple Cow” and “Heart To Heart.” Even at the … Read More