Scratchboard!

Like me, you probably wake up every morning and say to yourself, "Why Not Scratchboard?".

As the manufacturer states - Paint on it. Draw on it. Scratch on it. Piss on it. Call it rude names - Scratchboard, or "Clayboard", provides a greatness of ease not found in any other working surface since God himself carved the Ten Commandments upon stone tablets on Mount Sinai with lightning bolts and lasers.

In fact, it is said, that after Moses broke the tablets in anger, God offered him two Scratchboard plates from the art store to "try again".



I had to do a quick Scratchboard demo for my class so I took these old clayboards that were sitting around collecting dust and I made these. As you can see, I lost patience with the "scratching" part of Scratchboard. And, I'll never be as good as Mark Summers. I have some scratchboard nibs, but Mark Summers only uses a #11 XActo blade and he's a MACHINE so I mostly used the Xacto. But I encourage everyone to give scratchboard a try. Here, I started with a fully inked plate and scratched out the Snoop Dogg type. With the buildings and explosions, I drew them with a tech pen and scratched out lines for windows and highlights and used steel wool for a softer drybrush effect.



On the Snoop Dogg figure, I stated with a plain white clay surface and I drew it with tech pen, brush and a Hunt 102 crowquill. Making corrections, highlights, and speed lines is super easy as long as you have a sharp Xacto blade. I ran out of time, but I'll put it away and work on it later.