In my drawing class, we were asked to create both an interior and exterior psychological space. It was intended to be an exercise in perspective. My professor had previously suggested that I might enjoy working with scratchboard, so I decided to try it out. She was absolutely right; I think I have found the new love of my life. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys experimenting with new drawing materials. It's essential a black board and you use special tools to scratch the black off, revealing the white below. I think it's an especially wonderful material for those of us who do a lot of visible cross hatching. That's what I do mostly, so lucky me. For my interior space, I chose to draw a section of my niece's bedroom. Here is an in progress photo:
And the final product. This took me about 3 hours to finish. The bad thing about scratchboard? There's no erasing. So that can be troublesome.
The inability to erase was a much bigger issue with my exterior space. For this, I simply drove by some lovely old houses in St. Paul and picked one I thought looked a tish bit spooky. The angles of the house and all the various vanishing points meant one thing: way more planning time! Before I actually permanantly scratched lines into the board, I used white charcoal to draw the lines and double check angles. Here's an in progress for this one:
And after way too many hours (I'd say at least 13), the finished product:
In my opinion it was definitely worth the time (and the hand cramps, since I essentially did the entire thing in one day) but I would warn you, it's not for the faint of heart or the impatient.
