Unlike drawing or painting, scratchboard is a two-dimensional subtractive art form. It typically consists of a white kaolin clay-coated hardboard covered with black Indian ink.
There are many tools that can be used to create scratchboard art, because any tool that is sharp can be used to scratch away the ink on the board. I use a variety of sharp tools to remove, or scratch, through the black ink, revealing the white clay underneath. Most of the values within my artwork are achieved by varying the amount of ink removed, or grouping or spacing scratched marks to give the illusion of depth.
I use exclusively Ampersand Scratchboards as my surface, which have both incredible durability and smoothness. The materials used to scratch away the ink of a scratchboard, however, can be vast and vary depending on the texture I am trying to recreate. This is where I have fun and experiment to see what different textures I can achieve. My go-to tools for every artwork are an X-Acto knife (or craft knife) and various tattoo needles. Although I use these tools for every piece
