Art students go under the surface

Redhawks experiment with scratchboard art

Scratchboard art is a popular sketching method that involves using small cutting blades to scratch off the top surface and reveal the under color of the paper. Art students on campus take to experimenting with scratchboard drawing in a recent project. While some found the new style of sketching required some getting used to, others believe it ignited their creativity.

Sarah Drake, Guest Contributor
April 19, 2022

Ditching paper, pen, pencils, paint, and other typical mediums, art students are scratching out their latest assignment. But this isn’t some random art method as students are using Scratchboard to create art.

“Scratchboard is a special type of paper where you scratch off the top surface to reveal the under color of the paper. You scratch the surface off with small cutting blades,” art teacher Jeb Matulich said. “I think it’s always fun for students to experiment with new types of media. The challenge in scratchboard is that you scratch away the light values instead of building up the dark values like you do on regular white paper.”

Using scratchboard is about more than using a new medium as the ability to add value (creating depth and definition) to art is a goal while simultaneously providing a foundation for what’s to come in class.

“It will help them to think visually since it is the reverse of what they are used to doing,” Matulich said. “It is a great build up activity for printmaking which we will be starting next.”

This type of art was unfamiliar to most students and was harder for some to adjust to.

“I definitely think that the scratchboard is more difficult to use than paper and pencil because the card is sensitive and you can not undo any mistakes that are made, ” junior Stone Moore said. “I think it’s kinda interesting to use but I wouldn’t say that it’s any more fun than other mediums that we have used in the past because I feel like it’s a little more infuriating to use.”

But for senior Zainab Faisal, scratchboard helped ignite their creativity.

“I enjoyed using the scratchboard to create art because it helped spark my creativity in a unique way,” Faisal said. “I also think that using scratchboards will allow me to learn how to create highly detailed, and textured artwork.”