ScratchboardFiend
About Scratchboard and the Artist
The Ubiquitous
Art, for me, has always been something to enjoy (or not enjoy, for that matter) for what it is. I'll visualize an image or see something and I'll try to capture it; I don’t try get philosphical about it, asking myself why an image strikes me in such a way. At any rate, you won’t find a lot of maundering over what the images are here, or what frame of mind I was in, etc. I’d prefer to let them speak for themselves.
John’s Biography
I received my BFA in Illustration from the Pacific NW College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 1991. The years since then have been spent in a semi-professional capacity as a black and white graphic illustrator, my preferred mediums being scratchboard and traditional pen and ink. I started out doing portraits of celebrities, so you'll see a number of portraits in here in both mediums.
More recently, I've started doing some wildlife images, and have surprised myself with the results (I think I understand now why there are so many wildlife artists out there; animals simply make wonderful subject matter!). My current project is a children’s ABC book, still in progress. As the latest images get finished I’ve been uploading them to my Flickr account, here.
Influences
Aside from the usual graphic artist influences one encounters in art school (Durer, Dore, Escher, et. al...), the artists that have made the most impression on me in my career have been been modern (well, 20th century) illustrators.
Barry Moser’s woodcuts have graced the pages of some of the finest books ever written, from Moby Dick and Frankenstein to Dante's Inferno and The Bible.
Douglas Smith is known best for his book illustrations ( for example his work on Gregory MaGuire’s story of the Wicked Witch of the West, Wicked).
Mark Summers’ ability to catch the slightest expression with a few scratchboard strokes leaves me in awe.
Chris Van Allsburg is an award winning illustrator perhaps best known for The Polar Express.
Christopher Bing’s adaptation of Casey at the Bat is nothing less than marvelous.
As for Franklin Booth, he is without a doubt one of the 20th century’s finest practitioners of fine pen & ink illustration.
What Is Scratchboard?
Traditional scratchboard, or scraper board as some call it, is simply an 18x24 sheet of matting board covered with a smooth layer of white clay.
With uncoated scratchboard, one simply spreads another layer of ink (or paint - this is a quite versatile medium). Precoated scratchboard comes with the ink already spread over the board. The ink is then scratched off with a fine - edged tool such as an exacto-blade, or one of several specially designed scratchboard tools that are made today. The scratching leaves a fine, sharp white line of clay, which can produce anything from a line-drawing effect to the multi-line shading of a woodcut or engraving.
An outfit called Ampersand makes a terrific product called “Clayboard,” which has the clay spread over a sheet of masonite board, cut in several different standard sizes. This is great if you don't have the space to get out the exacto blades and t-squares to cut the scratchboard down to a manageable size. Clayboard is a little more expensive than the traditional scratchboard, but the line quality is fantastic. For those of you who prefer the versitility of making your own sizes, there isn’t much out there that I know of.
Canson used to make a very fine scratchboard but have long since gone out of the scratchboard business, much to the disappointment of many artists who relied on their product. I’ve tried the scratchboard made by Essdee, from England, but found the board too thin for my purposes; the ink was always bleeding through the clay to the board layer, which made the resulting scratch image gray in appearance - not good (I was using non-soluble India ink, which should have just stayed on the surface).
There’s a sort of scratch-paper out on the market as well, made by Scratch-Art. This stuff is fine for making pen and ink drawings, and scratching off tiny highlights here and there, but not so good for a full fledged scratch drawing; the paper doesn’t hold up well and tends to tear easily under that kind of abuse. Scratch-Art also makes some traditional scratchboard, but after my experience with their paper, I haven’t tried the board.
If anyone has any suggestions as to other scratchboard makers, please feel free to drop me a line.
Books about Scratchboard
As far as books on scratchboard are concerned, there are several examples, all of them very affordable:
Scratchboard for Illustration, by Ruth Lozner, published by Watson/Guptill, 1990. A really nice work, with lots of scratchboard examples done by major illustrators, this is great for either beginning artists or professionals. The first couple of chapters deal with the tools and techniques used in the medium, followed by some absolutely stunning examples of how far the medium can be stretched.
Mastering the Art of Scratchboard, by Norman Gaddini and Margie Wilson, published by Wordsworth Publishing Company, 2002. Heavy on technique, this is a marvelous manual by an accomplished artist in his 90’s, imparting decades of wisdom. Superb!
The New Scratchboard, by Charles Ewing, published by Watson/Guptill, 2001. Another recent work, indicating just how popular the scratchboard medium is becoming. This has lots of different examples of what can be done with scratchboard by different artists, along with some excellent technique. Acrylics, airbrush, and watercolor are shown along with the traditional black and white techniques. Again, a wonderful book.
If you have other book suggestions, please let me know. I need to add to my collection...
Links
For you intrepid surfers, here are some interesting sites I’ve stumbled across; all of them art-related. Have fun!
Ever heard of Facteur Cheval? He was a French postman in the late 18 and early 1900’s who built his own “Palais Ideal”, an eccentric, surreal castle, out of stones and other building materials he collected on his mail route every day for 33 years. The result was a beautiful and bizarre edifice, as if Angkor Wat, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and the Cappadocia caves in Turkey were all mashed together in one fantastical conglomeration. Check it out!
Speaking of strange architecture, why not also take a look at the infamous Bone Cathedral in the little town of Sedlec, near Kostnice in the Czech Republic. The interior of this church is decorated with thousands of human bones, the victims of plague and war during the middle ages in Europe. Chandeliers, a coat of arms, candelabras, wall decorations, chalices, you name it - all made out of people...
Also in the architectural vein, there is the Winchester Mystery House, one of the most famous “haunted” houses in the U.S. It was built by the heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune, who had her carpenters build additions to the house continuously for 38 years, because she believed the spirits of all those killed by Winchester Rifles were out to get her, and the constant building was the only way to keep the spirits appeased.
I enjoy the world of so-called “Low Brow” art, and Pooch is one of the best practitioners.
And then there’s Todd Schorr. Good Lord, this guy can draw!!!...
Moving along to the realm of Literature, might I suggest the one and only Mervyn Peake? Novelist, Poet, and amazing Artist (his illustrations for Alice in Wonderland are some of the finest, perhaps even better than Tenniel), this man had one of the most fantastic imaginations, evidenced by his magnum opus, the pseudo-fantasy Gormenghast trilogy; Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. The story of a gigantic, crumbling castle/city populated by a baroque, ritual-obsessed ruling family, this is like some opium-addicted Charles Dickens nightmare crossed with the Machiavellian shenanigans of I, Claudius, directed by Terry Gilliam at his gleefully sardonic best.
Comics on the Web
Thanks to my good friend and Web Guru extraordinaire, Adrian Wallace, I've started to get into the wild and wacky world of web comics. Here’s some truly wonderful storytelling for your perusal.
Adrian J. Wallace makes comics and websites (including this one). Check out his clear-line, old-timey comics at jumbodeluxe.com
The Tintin-esque Jonny Crossbones has everything, pirates, buried treasure, a sexy girlfriend, lots of adventure, and a hero wearing a skeleton costume. Fun for the whole family!
Then there’s Xander - The Adventures of a Boy and His Dog in the World of Dreams. This one’s about a young boy who can't wake up, and has to wander through the world of dreams to find his way out. Wonderful!
If family friendly stuff isn’t your bag, perhaps you'd enjoy Scenes From A Multiverse. It's wrong, in all the best kind of ways...
Like Zombies? Me too. Try The Zombie Hunters, and tell me what you think...
Lovecraft Is Missing is starting to rack up some notice as a comic to watch. Currently up for Best Horror Web Comic of 2010 by ComicMonsters.com, it poses the question, what if H.P. Lovecraft was writing his stories from life? Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Finally, here’s Split Lip, what they're calling the web comics answer to The Twilight Zone.
ScratchBoardFiend All Contents Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by John Maddin Unless Otherwise Noted.