Scratchboard

Scratchboard is my favorite medium. In art school, I found myself drawn (tee hee) to printmaking, especially etching. Today I consider myself someone who draws more than paints. I discovered this as a result of signing up for printmaking.

One way to create an etching, using metal as your avenue, is to cover a metal plate with a ground that you draw into exposing the metal to be etched in an acid bath. Wipe ink on, wipe it off, and send it through the press to put the image on paper.

After I left school, I wasn't about to buy a press nor did I want to continue using eco-unfriendly and dangerous acid baths.

Discovering scratchboard was the answer, because using the same etching tools you now drew through a layer of India ink exposing the white clayboard underneath. That's as far as the similarity to etching goes. Though I often wondred about wiping ink on and off and sending it through a press.

If it wasn't for the beauty of a finish Scratchbord drawing/painting, I don't know what my art would have become. Scratchboard has a beautiful surface and was a perfect medium for my style, and, I beg everyones' pardon, Scratchboard is a Fine Art medium.

At one time, Scratchboard was exclusively used as an illustrator's tool for commercial use, it was downgarded in America: not a "Fine Art" medium though a thrown away tennis shoe might be, 'found art'.

To me, Fine Art is a category. What it means is that the artist is doing their own work, the work embodies the artist's expressions, thoughts, desires, need, style, not somebody else's, and is not created to sell something.

Whether Fine or otherwise both types are created by highly skilled and talented artists as well as not so skilled or talented folk.