Orange Cat Face

This is a small (3"x5") Ampersand Art scratchbord.  Note: This size is available only as a sample bord, they don't sell these commercially. I started working on it while doing a demo and finished it a few days ago.  I was trying to illustrate how much of the black ink surface should be removed in order to get the most 'bang' from the claybord ink.  As you can see I scraped away a lot of the black, leaving the outline and some black here and there to give it some nice texture.  I then used some red, yellow, orange and brown ink. One of my techniques is to have a slightly damp paper towel handy so I can use it to pull some of the added ink color out.  The trick with this is to get on it while the ink is still damp...it dries quickly so you have to do this immediately after brushing it on. If you find you pull too much out, you can go right back in with more ink to make it darker or more saturated.  It's also a good idea to not have too much ink loaded on the brush.  You can dab it on the paper towel (in an area that won't be used to pull color back out.  I used my favorite tool on the eyes, (the iris)the red fiberglass eraser. It is very effective at pulling out the black, softening the surface, but leaving just enough grey and white to color.  As with everything I do, this is my simple, folk art style.  I could do realism, but my feeling about that is, why?  It just doesn't speak to me.  I love taking photos and then re-working them to make the image my own.  Don't get me wrong,  I'm totally impressed with the hyper-realism style, and it is amazing.
Get out there and make some art.  Whenever and wherever you can.  I'm still trying to convert the world to the joy of scratchbord, one bord at a time...