“Safety”
Greyhound
Scratchboard, with Art Marker & Watercolor (eyes)
(Ampersand Claybord™)
7″ x 5″
Progress steps & explanation follows:
Reference photo, taken at a greyhound rescue on the day a friend adopted this dog. That’s the friend’s arm in a fleece sweatshirt, around the dog’s neck.
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The first, sloppy stage – getting everything blocked in.
The reference photo has a lot of light tones in it, so I’m using Claybord (white scratchboard) for the drawing – that way, I don’t have to remove a lot of black. I’m taking artistic license here – choosing to make the upper and lower left sections dark instead of showing the dog’s body. At this stage, I’ve blocked in the tones by painting with full strength India ink & ink washes. It looks really rough, but all this will be detailed with scratching as I go along. I used a Rapidograph (technical pen) filled with India ink to draw the eyes and to scribble the stripes of her brindle pattern. I’ve just started “texturizing” the solid black areas by scratching, then I’ll stipple over the scratches and scratch more, so that it isn’t flat black. This drawing will be black/white/grey, with colored eyes.
Instagram video showing stippling on a portion of the background: www.instagram.com/p/BH4aLolBaqP
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At this stage, everything has been scratched back to blend the rough look from the previous stage and is much lighter. Watercolor added to her eyes. The background is finished – through a process of scratching, stippling, scratching, stippling, etc. to get that textured look. It’s much richer and almost velvety compared to the first stage, where the background was simply a layer of India ink.
Instagram video of the scratching process: www.instagram.com/p/BIYm9c4hROX
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Washes of ink over the previous round of scratching. With the scratches underneath to provide texture, this layer of ink is smoother than the very first ink layer. Another round of scratching will add detail & blend this layer.
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Getting closer, the left side of her face needs more work, as does the lower right corner of the sleeve.
Instagram video where you can see me using a marker to add grey: instagram.com/p/BIhG627BlO7
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Here’s the finished drawing
7″ x 5″ Claybord (white scratchboard) with India ink, ink wash, watercolor (eyes), Pitt marker (shades of warm grey) and a 7B pencil. I used the pencil near the end to add a layer of light shadow to the fabric on the right side. Scratched with a #16 X-Acto blade.
This one took a LOT longer than I had planned, but I’m really happy with how she turned out.
“Safety” received a Silver award (2nd place) in the Master’s division of the 2017 International Society of Scratchboard Artists’ Annual Exhibition. It also sold from the Exhibition.
Prints on metal are available.
Copyright 2016, Ann Ranlett
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