Tips and Techniques

When I display my scratchboard artwork, these are the most common questions I hear: What is Scratchboard? How long does it take you to do a scratchboard? Do you need a lot of patience? How do you add color? What if you make a mistake? I answer all these questions below. My newest scratchboard “Warm Fuzzies,” which I recently showed in progress for several scratchboard demonstrations, is now finished and posted below, with detailed step-by-step photos and explanations to help … Read More

I’ve been using all my art time recently to paint, finally taking a breather to show you what I’ve been up to. My concentration for the past couple of years has been on scratchboarding, which I love. But it was time to change gears and get back to watercolors. As a longtime member of the Tennessee Watercolor Society, I wanted to have at least two new show-worthy watercolor paintings to enter the 2024 biannual exhition, to be held in Knoxville … Read More

Have you ever noticed a background in a photograph which has blurry circles of light against darker areas? This is a “Bokeh” effect, and is comes from a Japanese word meaning “blur quality.” Evidently it means than just the blur, it’s the overall effect of the soft out-of-focus background, from an aesthetic viewpoint. I have used this effect in watercolor paintings in the past, and recently saw other scratchboard artists apply bokeh nicely to their backgrounds. So I decided to … 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 doing paintings of old barns, and it was time I did an icon – a “See Rock City” barn. For over 80 years, “See Rock City” barns have dotted the rural landscape. Bold lettering on the sides and roofs of country barns on two-lane rural roads invited visitors to a Chattanooga TN tourist attraction, a marketing idea of Rock City founder Garnet Carter. When he retired in 1969, Clark Byers, a self-taught painter and advertising firm employee, had … Read More

This small watercolor painting was inspired by a photo taken by my friend Debra of her husband Mike, all bundled up for a walk in a snowstorm. I was drawn by the overall monotone blue-grey coloring, contrasted by his skin tones. I decided to crop the image tightly to a square format, putting my main subject smack in the center – not the best composition by the ‘rules’ of painting, but I thought it appropriate in this instance. As I … Read More

Remember the scratchboard “Wee Lad” I last posted about? Well, I messed it all up! Here’s what happened…. I considered this a learning piece, so I decided to continue beyond the black and white stage and add some color. Since I was imagining the little boy as a Scottish lad, I thought it would add to the look to give him blue/green irises. I stratched away a bit more in his eyes to allow the color to show better and … Read More

I’ve just learned a new scratchboard technique for creating smooth transitions between shades of gray. It’s a great improvement over what I was doing. Sheryl Unwin, a fabulous scratchboard artist, was generous to share her methods for both stippling and hatching in a 4-session Zoom workshop. I’ve created “Wee Lad,” a small 5” x 7” Scratchbord™, with her tips. I love my results, but I need more practice to really latch onto this technique. It is rather time consuming … … Read More

“Fishing the Tellico” is the first watercolor painting I’ve completed in months, having spent my “art” time creating scratchboard art, painting a few pet portraits in acrylics, participating in some Zoom art sessions, and creating this new website. Switching media keeps things interesting, but it always takes me a bit of time to readjust. I put together a palette of many transparent colors for this painting and arranged them like a rainbow. To help me see the colors better I … Read More

  When we moved to our house in Tennessee, red foxes were among the abundance of wildlife we spotted in the surrounding woods. The red fox reference photo I found on Wildlife Reference Photos for Artists intrigued me, crying out to be painted! I love doing animals on scratchboard, and the inquisitive fox pose was a perfect candidate. Initially I planned to use black #Ampersand #Scratchbord™, my recent focus. As my design concept developed I switched gears… watercolor on #Claybord™ … Read More