I’ve been having a terrific time creating small scratchboard artwork, while also exploring subjects new to me. Each of these four new scratchboards is just 3”x5”, the size of an index card. The beauty of scratchboards, and one of the reasons I love creating art on them, is the ability to render very fine details - even at a small size. This characteristic is what draws viewers to my scratchboard paintings, always curious how such precision and exactness is achieved with this unique medium.
Lately I’ve been fascinated with feathers. This began when I saw fringed denim being shaped into feathers. The crafter in me got turned on, and I quickly began to develop my own methods, turning out feathers in many sizes and colors which I have made into pendants and earrings.
But back to scratchboards…. On my daily trail walks I occasionally find single feathers. I’ve collected a variety of sizes and colors, knowing they would be a challenging subject for a scratchboard. The ‘hairs’ on a feather are fine and aline in a single layer, nearly parallel to each other. Looking closely at my reference feathers - and without getting too scientific here - I noticed how the shaft down the center makes an arc, and a shadow is cast to one side of it. The fine parallel fibers (‘barbs’) sometimes get separated and pushed on top of each other, creating V-splits. At the bottom of the feather there may be a loose fluffy layer of down feathers, curling off in many directions before the quill end of the shaft. Depending upon the type, age and sex of the bird, and the body location of a feather, it might one or more colors. These are the types of details I aim to capture, and they make my art more realistic and interesting. I experimented with many different scratching tools and procedures, eventually perfecting my techniques to closely duplicate Mother Nature’s beauty.
The single feather art shown above, “Frequent Flyer” and “Foxtrot-Lima-Yankee” (which in the alpha alphabet spells “FLY”) were my first attempts at scratchboard feathers and I am pleased with the results. To add a bit of interest, for my third feather artwork I included one of my favorite subjects, a cat, whose attention is focused on the airborne feather in “Cat’s Up.” Shown here also is a very small scratchboard, “Tweetie,” which is half the size of the others above at 2.5” x 3”, and enhanced using colored inks.
I’ve painted horses in watercolors and acrylics but the fourth mini above is my first horse done in scratchboard. Photographer Karen Broemmelsick captured a head-on view and bright side lighting – an ideal reference for my “Horse With No Name.” By leaving much of the scratchboard panel unscratched and solid black, I created a dramatic image, as if the unlit side of the horse’s head melts away into the dark shadows.
These small works are so fun to create that you will likely see me do more in the near future!
