Northern Flicker - Finished

"Northern Flicker" 2014

6x8" 

scratchboard on black Ampersand board

Done with #11 scalpel 

Reference photo from Rodney Campbell on Paint My Photo

There was a previous post about this one and the process. I used a board that had previously been scratched and scraped off. It was an interesting experiment but I won't be doing that again. Every little mark in the board became highlighted when I sprayed the finish coats on it. It's not totally horrible, but the board doesn't have the beautiful pristine black that is normally a scratchboard characteristic. 

In this image I heavily retouched it using Photoshop to get the rich blacks again. I would probably sell the image, but at a discounted price. With the retouching though I can still offer this as a print. 

So, lesson learned - don't reuse boards in this way.

Experimenting with a Northern Flicker

I guess you could call this one a personal challenge on starting with a goofy board which once had a traced portrait start, then the inked and heavily scratched start of a red-tailed hawk, then totally scraped and re-inked with a brush and now has the flicker started on it. You can see what happened with the white chalk and the fingerprints (the ink wasn't wet but still seemed to grab the prints like a magnet) and also the heavy brush texture of the ink.

I like what the brush texture is doing in the background - it's a bit treeish. And the fingerprints, which would not come off btw, are now incorporated as diffused light. So it's coming along in an interesting way. If it finishes well I'll be happy, if it doesn't I'll still have learned a few more things. I'm having fun with it. This is a 6x8" board that started its journey as a white Claybord. The reference photo is from Rodney Campbell over on Paint My Photo.

The heavy ink is a bit of a challenge to scratch in some places and some of the vertical brush marks are visible through the bird, but it doesn't bother me artistically since it is a texture over the entire board.

I probably won't do color on this.