Rainforest Again

The latest versions - this is just a snapshot with my phone camera to show the progress. They are pretty much finished - just tweeking them a bit  more and giving it a bit of time before I varnish them.
These are 5x7's and done with FW Acrylics on Claybord™ then scratched into and glazed with light washes many times. The biggest change from the last update was replacing the hummingbird with the more colorful orchids. It seemed to complete the set much better with the brighter colors and helped balance that brilliant yellow in the toucan.

Amazon Rainforest Update

The latest versions of each.
Again, the toucan and macaw are finished. The jaguar, mother and child, and marmoset are much closer to finished. The hummingbird is only about 1/4th finished. But they're coming along.
See this post: Amazon Images for the beginnings of this set.

Amazon Images

I'm working away on this set of images from S. America's Amazon region. They are all images from sites like Paint My Photo and wetcanvas except for the mother and child which was taken in the Amazon by my mom and dad. They are 5x7" and done with FW acrylic inks on white Claybord™. The Macaw is finished, the toucan is amost finished. I just started the scratching on the jaguar yesterday. Lots to go!

I also did the parrot in a more traditional scratchboard manner on black board just to see how it looked both ways. 

WIP Watching Over Sparrows

This one is still a work in progress (WIP). It is 5x7 and on black Ampersand board. So far I have only used a #11 scalpel blade to scratch it. That seems to be my favorite tool right now. I love the very light, soft marks I can make with it.
The subject matter for this is from my own photos manipulated in Photoshop to get a digital image to work from. The sparrows are regulars at my feeder and from a big series of photos I took over a few winter days of strong backlighting. The eye is my own from a selfie I took last year for another project.
My heart has always been in art that portrays spiritual subjects based on Christian themes. This one is based on the theme of God's care for us in Luke 12: 6-7 "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."
In this one the eye represents God watching over sparrows, and yet the eye is not focused on the birds before him, but on the viewer. He watches over us: we are his precious sparrows.
I have a fair bit of work to do on this still, but will be posting along the way or when I finish it with a good scan. This is just from my phone camera.
I am open to doing more with this, maybe going into a small series. This started as a study for a larger piece.

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.

2 Works in Progress: Red Tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle

 Red Tailed Hawk, 5x7" on white Claybord

Bald Eagle, 5x7 on black Ampersand scratchboard

WIP: Owen

WIP: Owen, 7x5, black scratchboard from Ampersand - Stage 1

My grandson, a very sweet 2 year old. This is about 2 hours worth of work so far with a long ways to go, but I'm happy with the progress so far. I've not tried any portraiture in scratchboard and haven't done any kind of portrait in art for a long time.

Stage 2: lots of scratching into the shadows. It's too light now compared to the bright side so the next step will be to brush a diluted ink wash of the Ampersand black ink over the shadow side and work on the planes of the face. The shadow side looks too flat.

More progress to be posted here as I work.

Still working. The bottom right is the latest scratch progress. I need to work in the shadow areas more with dark ink washes. I'm also distracted by the 3 sunlit dashes in the bottom right area. I'll wash over those too. Coming along though. I want to do a couple more versions of this in the same size. One on blackboard again leaving the dark areas unscratched, and one on whiteboard.

WIP: Buddy

Buddy, 6x6", black scraperboard, watercolors. from my own reference photo. Buddy was my favorite cat. I'm still pushing and pulling shades of grey and working on the chair. Since Buddy was grey anyways I probably won't add any more color to this that what is there in eyes and nose. 

After several years of working in other art forms, I am returning to scratchboard. I miss it. And there are so many more resources out there now on the internet for help and networking that I think I will enjoy getting into it again. 

One of my big problems right now is deciding which of my photos to work from! No matter what other kind of artwork I'm doing I always take lots of photographs. I have a large stack that I picked out as possibilities for claybord and scratchboard.