Silly Selfie

"I composed an imaginery image of my cat taking a selfie, with the magic of Photoshop, as my reference for this scratchboard. I merged three of my photos: Jethro the cat in a crazy pose, my cell phone in camera mode, and a photo I staged with Jethro's paw grabbing mine.

I initially used the resulting image as a photo transfer in my Claybord™ 101 video and presentation. The photo transfer got such a positive reaction (even more than my eight accompanying paintings of Jethro!) that I decided to use it again, as a reference for this new scratchboard painting, Silly Selfie.

The original photo of Jethro had a background of grey gravel, but I changed it to a soft sheepskin throw. I created the look of this background texture using a fiber brush in circular motions to etch into the black surface of the Scratchbord. I varied the values to look like the fabric was folded and bunched up. On Jethro's fur, I did the scratching in the direction of the fur growth, primarily making series of short lines with an etching tool. The fiber brush was used in areas of soft light fur. The most challenging part of this painting turned out to be the details on the phone display, where I had to be so precise in a very small size.

For the finishing touches, I added a small amount of color with mixed Scratchbord Inks, and then scratched in Jethro's wonderful long whiskers. Jethro gave the final art a big happy purr!

Watch a short video I created to see my entire process of creating this painting, "Scratchboard Start to Finish."