SCRATCHBOARD

A bit of history: In the history of pyrography, we told about the primitive cave people who performed all kinds of artistic endeavors. It is natural to assume that the innate desire of human beings was to "make your mark." This is inherent in all of us. Archeologist have found wall drawings, sculptured wall reliefs and pyrographic art in caves throughout Europe, Asia and Africa. Even the people of the great ancient civilizations, such as China, Rome, Greece and Egypt, had the desire to incise stone with markings.

Sgraffito is defined as the art of cutting away parts of a surface layer (as of plaster or clay) to expose a different colored ground. This was the basis of the art of scraperboard, and was known as "scraperboard art" at the turn of the twentieth century. Color was not in vogue, and scraperboard art fit in very well with the illustrators of that time. Since it was a basic black and white art form, it was easy to reproduce and was immediately embraced by newspapers and magazines. It fit well into their style of black and white printing, and was enthusiastically accepted by printers as the most economic method of illustration. The more expensive method of reproducing graphics at that time was from woodcuts; Of course, the inverted illustrations of the woodcut artisans were long and laborious.

Although, being over a hundred years old, there were great periods when the art was in stagnation, or in the doldrums. As with pyrography, there is a resurgence of the art on the horizon. More and more art supply houses are stocking various forms of scraper board. Many people in the United States are calling the art "scratchboard." It is really a method of two or more motions, both scraping and scratching. In my experience, I have found that scraper board that is manufactured in England is superior to the board produced here in the United States.

In order to perform the art, you must buy or make a scraperboard medium on which to work. What is a scraper board? It is a paper or paperboard that has been coated with a white clay-like substance over one side of the entire surface. Then, this entire surface is covered with India Ink by spray or brush. The goal is to get the inked surface as uniform in thickness as possible. After drying, the artist takes a sharp instrument and removes the black ink and exposes the white secondary surface. I have found the scraper points sold at art stores to be crude and insufficient. I have used various sharpened, unheated burning pens and gotten much better quality and results. Many of the scraperboard artists who make their own board have used stronger backings such as Masonite. They coat the Masonite with white clay and spray the black ink over it. This gives them a much sturdier board and makes it easier to mount in a frame.

This art form reproduces very well. Artists can make reproductions easily, and sell them for a greatly reduced price over the necessarily expensive price of the original. Many artists buy just the white clay board and paint the ink only in those areas where they will do the scraping. In this way you can have a white or colored background. Some artists who know precisely what they are going to create, can color specific areas before inking the surface. In this way, when they scrape off the ink, they can have a colored under-layer.