Art is All About Trying New Mediums

There are multiple different art mediums that artist use. Some more commonly used than others. Even then, artist still like to use different mediums when it comes to one piece of artwork, if it’s a physical piece of work.

When they’re used together to make a piece of work have more life in it. The most commonly used media are

• Digital Painting

• Acrylic/Oil Paint

• Watercolor

• Alcohol Markers

• Color Pencils

Something New

I try to take at least one art class that my school offers every year, to see how I can improve my art and have a piece of artwork that I’m proud of. I was able to take Drawing and Painting last year, which has been one of the more fun art classes I’ve had, and got to try a new form of art medium, scratch board.

Scratch board is exactly what it sounds like, artists use sharp tools to scratch way at black India ink that's painted on top of white China clay. It’s more of a medium that uses values to make the picture, so black and white photos are best to use for references.

In some ways, it’s calming to scratch away at the black ink to see the white and see the image come to life. It’s one of those art mediums that you just have to go start for it and not be scared to make the first mark in the ink.

The Result

So the assignment that was given will the scratch board was to choose an image that we took or that we like. After that, we were given the image, in black and white, and to recreate it on the scratch board to the best of our abilities.

Image form FizzySodaWave on twitter

To this day, this piece of work is still one of my favorite artworks that I’ve done. I was given a lot of freedom when it came to choosing what image to use for it. I was able to use on my favorite things in the world to base my art off of.

The only downside to using this medium is that it’s difficult to make a larger space a solid white. If the board gets scratched too much in one place, it will start to wither away and you might put a hole through it. Other than that, scratch board was a fun medium to use and can give you amazing results.

But I rather use scratch board over color pencil. With color pencil, there's so many ways to use them and it takes so long to complete a full piece with them. I, personally, don’t have the patience to do artwork with color pencil and after awhile, without a break, your wrist beginnings to hurt if you press down too hard on the pencil.

The only thing that I can compare it took that feels the same it printmaking. In printmaking, you make from your lightest value to your darkest, by carving it out on a block of linoleum, spreading ink on say block and pressing paper onto it.

If I was given the opportunity, I would make a lot more Pikachu based scratch board art because of all the values he had once he’s in black and white.