Mouse Trap

"Lots of scratchboard artists do animal art, and I wanted to tell a story in this painting of a cat. The cartoon-like "mouse hole" idea came to me, along with using a point of view from inside the darkness. The little mouse is hiding in the shadows, away from the piercing gaze of his arch enemy!

I purposely restricted color to the cat's face, both to add emphasis to it as the focal point and to reinforce the concept of the dark confines of the mouse's hideaway. I applied watercolors as the last step in this artwork, keeping them transparent so the textures I created as whites and grey tones on the black scratchboard surface would not be concealed."