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.

Spray Finishes

A good teaching video on spraying finishing varnish on artwork. It's by Golden but should work for any spray finish.
It seems spraying scratchboard is the bane of any artist, even with some jokingly saying to do it while taking Valium. There seem to be many opinions on which sprays are the best, but standard advice is:
spray on warm, dry days
spray in a dust free area
don't mix brands or types of spray - it can cause cloudiness and even cracking
Edited:  I just bought and used Lascaux UV Protect Semi-Matte finish and I will keep buying it for now. It sprayed well, gives just a very soft sheen to the artwork, deepened the blacks nicely, and didn't show dust much at all. It is quite expensive compared to most other brands and it really has a strong toxic smell - use a respirator!
Edited again: I finally got a great finish on one - I put the board at the 45 degree angle recommended then sprayed with 5 very light coats with about 15 minutes between each. No orange peel, no dust spots, no gloppy stuff.

2 Works in Progress: Red Tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle

 Red Tailed Hawk, 5x7" on white Claybord

Bald Eagle, 5x7 on black Ampersand scratchboard

Scanning and Processing Black Scratchboard

The mottling in the first and second images is from the matte varnish that is sprayed on.
Adjusting the blacks helps remove most of that and  careful dust removal using the cloning tool can take out the rest.

Getting a good scanned image can take a lot of practice and experimentation. I'm still learning, but this is what I'm doing so far especially in achieving the rich blacks of scratchboard.
When I scan I use an Epson Perfection 600 scanner which will do prints and also negatives and transparencies. I always hit the reset button to take off any scanner adjustments to sharpness, color, or levels and do those myself later using a photo editing program (Photoshop Elements 11 which came with the scanner).

When I open the raw scanned image in Photoshop I first adjust the levels with the original artwork right beside me to compare. I try to get the blacks as dark as I can without losing any of the lighter values in the image. I do the same to the white levels - get them white without losing any of the subtle grey values near them. If it is a black and white image I also strip out the colors using the desaturate feature.

Then I start going over the blacks especially doing dust removal with the cloning tool. It takes a fair amount of time to do this right. I zoom in quite a bit on the image to be sure to get it all. I get a bit obsessive in this stage to get as much as I can. At this stage I could also remove any smudges in the dark areas and also transfer lines that still may be there.

Once I have the image the way I want it I may sharpen it a bit - but not too much or the subtle areas will be lost. I also add a layer and tint it to 5-7% transparency with an olive color to bring back the warmer tones in of the scratchboard.

If I want to print the image I usually have to run a few test prints and make a few more adjustments to get the print matching the artwork - again with the original artwork right beside me.
That is my process at this time. It works pretty well for me so far. I got a lot of tips from the wetcanvas scratchboard  forum, and especially Cathy Sheeter who is one of the moderators for the forum.

Tracing and Transfers

Not a good photo, but I wanted to show something about transferring images onto scratchboard. In this one I started tracing with a pen (the head on the left) then switched to a soft pencil once I saw what a hard line I was getting with the pen.
I've not been doing scratchboard for long, but I already know that the lighter the white transfer line the easier to get rid of it on the black board. The pen left a line that was much too strong. Easy to see and follow, but hard to cover especially in lightly scratched or black areas. So far even some of my finished sprayed works the transfer lines still show.
I also switched from Saral transfer paper to Super Chaco paper. It seems good and comes off a bit easier.
When I was using the white Claybord a few years back I drew the sketches in ink, but now I just enlarge my images on the computer, print them to size, and trace. It's so much easier and, for me, faster - plus, less mess on the black scratchboard to have to cover or work around.