Scratchboard tutorial

I was recently asked how I make my scratchboards. Making scratchboards is a lot more fun then buying them and allows you to control the size, thickness, texture, colour, everything, to get the ultimate unique ground to work on. Homemade boards will always come out different. The thicker wax allows for shallower or deeper cuts when making lines which in turns effects there contrast. Areas dig right down the white board will look brighter and whiter, while shallow strokes will look more transparent. You can also paint back into areas to make them dark again. Check out my little tutorial to make your own. Click on the thumbnail to see it bigger.

Scratch boards are fun!

Ah back to school and work is upon us. It's a new year, I'm another year older and still posting some older work. New stuff will be coming with the new semester but I want to finish getting some old stuff posted first. Today: scratch boards. I made all of these myself using melted wax and then dusting on a layer of flour and then covering with ink using a brush. I enjoyed making my own scratch boards and found that thicker wax give me the result I want better than store bought scratch boards do. The coloured one of my shoe is white board with pencil crayon coloured on then acrylic coloured ink on top. The Beluga is reversed: black ground, with black wax and then white gesso on top. The third one, featuring Mulder and Scully is on a textured ground. I did all of these in Media Studies last year and found it to be one of the most enjoyable projects. Unfortunatly, these arn't the best scans. Because of the wax, homemade scratch boards can melt when scanned so they have be lifted above the surface of the scanner. Still you get a pretty good idea of what they look like from these.