After recently creating a few paintings of fury and feathered creatures on Scratchbord®, I decided to feature some other favorite subjects in my newest scratchboard painting: wildflowers and weathered barnwood. The black background and the process of scratching down to a white surface favor subjects with light values and strong textures; with this in mind, I’ve learned that I need to select my subjects and plan my compositions differently than I do when painting on white paper or canvas.
Wild queen anne’s lace flowers grow abundantly where I live, along fenceposts, in pastures, beside country roads, and around old barns and buildings. I’ve amassed a big collection of digital reference photos of these lovely white lacy flowers and I’ve created (and sold) several paintings which included queen anne’s lace: Rusty Hinge, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Red Bug.
The white and light green shades of these flowers and foliage contrast well with a black background, so I chose them as my wildflower subject once again. I wanted to depict the flowers in an appropriate setting, to add interest without distracting from my focal point of one fully opened bloom. Many old nearby barns have broken and missing boards, so I kept my eyes peeled as I travelled until I spotted an ideal reference to photograph… a barn with deeply textured grey vertical boards, with a space of darkness between two boards where an old board was missing. The barn was close to the road, so I hopped out of the car and took several reference photos, at eye-level and holding my camera perfectly parallel with the section of the barn I envisioned would work best in my painting.
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| My final composite photo, for reference |
With the magic of Photoshop, I flopped, simplified, rearranged, combined and cropped my two reference photos to create a new composition, as shown in my photos. The big fully opened flower, my focal point, is silhouetted against the black background, using the design concept of making the most value contrast at your focal point. For more interest, I decided the board on the left would partially shade the bloom, as if the flower was leaning back a bit into the barn. The barnboard on the right has more interesting textures from an old knot hole than the board the left, so I made it wider, which also helped balance the off-centered big flower. Unopened blossoms, stems, and feathery foliage were arranged so some overlapped the barnboards and some fell against the dark background. With my composition complete, I printed it out, 10″ x 8″ to match my Scratchbord®.
As the step-by-step photos show, I did lots of scratching into the black surface before applying any color. Initially I scratched just with an x-acto knife #11 blade, the tool I use most frequently. You can see that I avoided scratching the barnwood where I planned to have some unopened blossoms overlap. This helps keep the area smooth for later application of paint and for scratching other details in those spots. Then, to uncover these areas of black without scratching into the surface, I used my previously successful technique of carefully dissolving the black india ink surface with rubbing alcohol and wiping away the black India ink coating to reveal clean white areas for the big flower, unopened smaller blossoms and foliage. These white areas were then enhanced and extended with details by scratching with the x-acto blade, as you seen in Step 3.
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| (click to enlarge steps) |
I used Golden QoR® watercolors to add color to this painting. Over the barnboards, I painted transparently with Payne’s Grey. I used Pyrrole Red Light dulled with a bit of its compliment, Viridian Green, to add color touches to the boards, as if the barn had once been painted red. The plant parts were primarily painted with greens created by mixing Phthalo Blue and Hansa Yellow, varying the values.
I struggled with how best to create the numerous tiny white flowers which cluster as the crown of the big blossom. Scratching with the x-acto blade works best to scratch lines vs. round dots. I experimented with my scratching tools and found the best for this step was a curved blade which I bought years ago as part of a scratching tool kit from Ampersand Art, the company which manufactures the Scratchbord panels I use. This scratch nib wipes off a bigger area of black than the point of the x-acto knife, and served as the best way to revealed a round smooth white area to depict the tiny flowers.
Another tool I used for this project was an extra fine fiberglass brush. The Ampersand tool kit mentioned above came with a wide fiberglass brush tool, which I wore out a while back. When I shopped to replace it individually, I found two different fiberglass brush widths on Amazon, each sold as sticks to insert into a pen-type holder. These bundles of fiberglass, when rubbed on the Scratchbord surface, create a soft-edge stroke as opposed to the hard lines of the x-acto blade. I used the fiberglass brush on this painting to soften areas of the barnboard texture. Beware – tiny fiberglass fibers break off as you use this tool, so be careful to clean them away with a soft cloth so they won’t irritate your skin.
The details are so fun to add when using Scratchbord! This wildflower’s stems are covered with tiny hair-like white fibers, which are readily reproduced on this painting surface with scratches by an x-acto blade. I also scratched fine lines within the big flowerhead and around the unfurling new blossoms. I added more watercolors, using transparent Payne’s Grey on parts of the tiny flowers to give dimension to their white petals and to shade the left end of the big blossom (Payne’s Grey is a bluish tone). I’ve read that the queen anne’s lace flower got its this name from a story about England’s Queen Anne pricking her finger and a drop of blood fell on white lace she was holding. Some blooms have a tiny section of purple flowerets in the center, as in the bloom in my painting, which must represent the “blood” from the tale. I mixed this purple tone with Quinacridone Magenta and a bit of Ultramarine Blue. The final touch on the blossoms was to add some small black marks with a fine point Pigma Micron permanent pen, especially within the center section of the big flower where I had cleaned the surface down to white. This makes the flowers look more lacy, as if the black background is visible between the clusters of flowerets. I also painted bright blue (Phthalo Blue) to the background in the top area, as if the sky was shining through broken barnboards on the other side of the building. After declaring this painting done, I let it dry thoroughly for 24 hours, cleaned the surface of residue with a dry soft cloth, and sealed it with two coats of matte finish Krylon “Gallery Series” UV Archival Varnish spray.
Thanks to all who purchased my original paintings, prints, calendars and notecards in 2018, making it my best art year ever! I have more new paintings in my brain than I have time to paint, and I hope to be as prolific in 2019 as last year, so stay tuned.
