"Sleeping Patterns" - New Scratchboard Drawing

"Sleeping Patterns", diptych - each half is 8" x 8", on Ampersand Scratchbord

I finished this drawing with about two days to spare. I wanted to submit something new for this year's International Society of Scratchboard Artists' (ISSA) exhibit. I had to take a week-long break from the "Down on the Farm" series to make the April 1st entry deadline. This tiger drawing has been on my "to do" list since I saw the wonderful reference photo in a Sacramento Zoo membership brochure. I'm fortunate to have contacts at the Zoo, so I was able to get permission to use the photo and a high resolution digital file from which to work. I knew from the moment I saw the photo that I needed to come up with a unique concept for rendering it. Using scratchboard was a no-brainer and the composition pretty much created itself. I wanted to makethis a diptych (two part) piece, so I took the original photo and cropped/scaled it into two 8" x 8" sections. I liked the mirror image of the photo better, so I flipped it also. I used Derwent Inktense pencils to color only the tigers' heads and I knocked the rest of the drawing back with a wash of diluted black ink. You can see each finished half at the bottom of this post.

The original photo

The photo flipped, sized and cropped into two parts

Greyscale version of the previous photos

Since I was up against a deadline, I didn't have time to scan this drawing in progress, but I did scan each part after I finished the scratching.



And here are the two finished halves.


This piece represents a lot of scratching and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. And it's always nice when a finished drawing matches the vision I had for it!

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"Down on the Farm" - New Series

In 2011, Laurie Barrows, the curator of the Art Can Heal program at the Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital contacted me to see if I'd be interested in showing my work there. I agreed, but our 2012 schedules didn't mesh, so we chose April 2013 for the show. The show opens in mid-April, but I don't have the exact date yet.

I decided I wanted to come up with a new series of scratchboard drawings, since scratchboard is an under-represented medium and I truly love sharing it with others. Scratchboard drawings are more time-intensive than other mediums I use, but I had months to come up with a new batch of drawings and I planned to work these drawings in a simpler style than I usually do. Well, of course, the drawings took on a mind of their own, and they're not really much less detailed. And as is always the case, although I started on the first board of this series in December of 2012, I'm feeling the time crunch to get them all finished! Having said all that, I'm really happy with how the boards are turning out and have been getting wonderful feedback as I share them on Facebook and WetCanvas.

I chose "Down on the Farm" as the theme for my show, since I have plenty of reference photos of farm animals. Completed so far are a border collie, our dog Arrow, a donkey, a cat, a chick, a sunflower and a vintage Ford tractor. Nearly finished is a pair of mini foals. I've just started on a goose and left to do are a border collie/sheep diptych, a goat, two hens, a pig and a cow. That's fifteen in total, but I'm making good progress! You can see the series and various stages of progress in my Facebook album.

"Tough Chick", 6" x 6" Ampersand Scratchbord, colored with Derwent Inktense pencils
This is one of the boards, "Tough Chick". All but two of the reference photos are my own. One of the hens I'll be drawing is from a photo by Katherine Plumer. Kat Moore, a fellow scratchboarder offered some photos of her banty chickens. She sent quite a few and I fell in love with this one.



I've been scanning a few in-progress stages of each of the boards in this series. Here are the scans of "Tough Chick", along with the reference photo. As I do with all my scratchboard drawings, I also work with a greyscale version of the photo, to give me a better idea of the tones of the image. The second greyscale image is one with adjusted contrast to give me more darks and lights.







At this stage, the scratching is mostly complete


One of the ways I'm saving a little time is by not re-scratching very much after I've added the color. If this were going to be a stand-alone drawing, I'd go back in and scratch out more of the black and re-color to build even more depth and detail. As it is, these drawings resemble tinted photographs or woodcuts, and that's perfectly ok!

An animated image of the stages

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On Entering Art Shows

I decided to try and enter more art shows this year. Not just local shows, but shows where I have to ship work that is selected. In past years, I haven't had much in the way of "surplus" art. Much of my work is commissioned pieces which aren't available to enter in shows. The extra work I do have is needed in my space at the Auburn Old Town Gallery. This year, I have some extra art because I did a number of new paintings for an Art Walk last year, and over the years, the surplus has been building up. Many shows require that entered work be current, created within the last year or two, others aren't as particular.

While being accepted into select shows is good for my resumé and garners exposure in new places, it also has a downside in that I have to pay to enter and then pay to ship my work. However, another item on the plus side is that shows offer cash awards, so it's worth a shot. If I'm hoping to win an award, it's important to pick shows where my work has a chance, so I look for shows where my art (subject and/or medium) is a good fit. So far, things are going well, I entered three pieces in the Sacramento Fine Arts Center's "Animal House" show and all three were accepted (no awards, but at least I was able to hand-deliver the art). One of the pieces was my scratchboard drawing of Magpie, mainly because I want to bring attention to scratchboard when I have the opportunity. It's an uncommon medium in the art show world. Rarely is there a category specifically for scratchboard. Sometimes there will be a category for "drawing". In the SFAC show, all two-dimensional art other than photography was lumped together.

The other two entries were paintings "recycled" from the Art Walk: Ernie & Velvet.

My work was also accepted into the 26th Annual "Animals in Art" Show at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. I learned of this show in 2012 and thought it would be a good one to enter this year. I submitted two works and one was accepted. I'm honored to have been selected, since my drawing of Homer the pig was one of 75 pieces chosen out of 426 entries submitted by 181 artists. Homer is an older drawing, but there was no restriction on creation date for this show. I looked at last year's entries and thought he would be a good fit; I'm glad the judge thought so too! The show opens March 23rd, awards have not been announced yet.


I'm currently working on a diptych (two-part drawing) for the ISSA's 2nd Annual Scratchboard Exhibition, which I'll have to ship to Vancouver (British Columbia). I'll be attending the Exhibition and annual conference, so I definitely want a piece or two in that show. I have one or two others already completed that I'll enter, but I really want to have something new and different to submit. I created the Magpie drawing above for the 2012 ISSA show.

And since this has been a really scratchboard-heavy post, why not finish it off with a preview of works in progress for an upcoming solo show of my drawings? It will be in April in the "Art Can Heal" gallery of a local hospital. I'm scratching away like a mad woman to complete 15 new drawings for my "Down of the Farm" show. The icing on the cake for this show is that it will add to my surplus of art to enter in shows later this year and into 2014!

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Vernal Pool Illustrations

In November of last year, I was contracted to create some illustrations for vernal pool signage that will eventually be installed at the Jepson Prairie Preserve. Many years ago, I created illustrations for Sacramento Splash's wetland education curriculum and the Jepson job was a result of that connection. This project was funded by a grant which had a year-end deadline, making a quick turnaround necessary. I have to admit, I felt a little crazy agreeing to do this on such short notice, but I would have been more crazy to turn it down! I'm thrilled that my art will be on signage at Jepson Prairie; my client was easy to work with (she provided the majority of the reference photos and was very clear on what she wanted); and the job paid well. Funding still needs to be raised for the sign fabrication and installation and there may be additional illustration work at that time - most likely some edits to the existing drawings. Drawn in pen, there were 18 single-subject drawings (approx. 4" wide, varying heights), 9 smaller drawings (approx. 2" wide, varying heights) and 5 landscape schematics (approx. 9" x 11"). That added up to many hours and plenty of ink! Below is a selection of the single-subject drawings. The drawings are line art because the signs will be laser-etched metal, which will last longer out in the field than other sign production methods. My client set up the sign layouts, incorporating my drawings with text and time-line diagrams to explain the habitats and denizens of the Jepson Prairie preserve.

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From Cell Phone Photo to Finished Portrait

In this post, I'll show how a portrait with a challenging photo reference goes from initial consultation to finished product.

My client found my work on the web and sent a cell phone photo of his two cats. He wanted a portrait of them as a Christmas gift for his wife. The photo quality wasn't optimal, but I really liked the composition. Since there was a risk of spoiling the surprise, it wasn't feasible for me to go to his house to take more photos, so I told him what his options were with the photos he could provide. He wanted a detailed portrait as opposed to something in a looser style. He had initially inquired about a mini portrait (ACEO, 3.5" x 2.5") vs. a full-sized one. Because both cats were to be in the portrait, a mini portrait wouldn't have worked, too much detail would be lost, and the proportions wouldn't fit. Due to the quality of the photo, there wasn't enough detail to go any larger than 6" x 7". He agreed to the 6" x 7".

In the photo, the grey cat has decent detail, even though the photo is grainy and a little blurry. The black cat, however, is what worried me, it's pretty tough to see much detail in her, especially in her face. When I work on a portrait, I enlarge or reduce it to the size I'll be working so I can transfer the basic outlines and details to my working surface. You can see how it would have been difficult to enlarge this photo very much and maintain enough detail for a quality portrait.

I took the photo and lightened it substantially to try to pull out some detail in the black cat.

The lighter photo helped some, but I also found some good photos of black cat faces on the web and used another photo provided by my client.

Next to the cat's face is a foot reference I found on the web, since I had to draw the rest of the grey cat's right foot. The other leg/foot is a piece I cropped out of the original photo so I could lengthen the grey cat's left leg to sit on the same plane as his right. You can see how that looks in the photo below:

And here's the a version of the photo I converted to greyscale in order to have a better idea of the tones in the portrait.

As you can see, it took some editing and research to have what I needed to complete this portrait properly. Here is the final result:

Despite some frustration, I'm happy with the portrait and my client was too. Even though I was able to pull this off, it's not something I want to tackle very often. It's certainly much easier with a good, detailed photo. Whenever possible, I take my own photos since I know what works best for a portrait and can get high quality photos with plenty of detail. Of course, that's not always possible, and over the years, I've learned to be firm in what I'm able to offer a client, based on the references they can provide. Since I offer a number of style and size options for portraits, I rarely have to tell a client "no", but it's not uncommon for me to limit their options. In the end, that results in both of us being happy.

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Wordless Wednesday

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