Chance, Work in Progress. Scratchboardwith acrylic ink, 5 x 7 in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.
Here Chance is in colour. Despite my best efforts with Adobe Elements (the software I use to manage my digital photographs) I couldn’t quite get the colour of her fur in this digital image to match exactly what appears on the IRL (in real life) scratchboard. But take my word for it: the real scratchboard isn’t nearly so purple looking in the fur areas around the ruff and legs as what you’re likely seeing on your monitor.
To do the colour on this scratchboard I have three photo references to look at: one has a distinct red cast to the fur, as though one of Chance’s parents had been a fox; a second photo shows the facial tabby markings much more clearly, but the colour cast is rather yellow; and a third, taken outside out of direct sunlight (which, in my experience, would give the truest colour of all) shows that Chance’s fur is a wonderful combination of the two with some grey areas thrown in for good measure. Although, the third photo was taken in early spring and from the look of it Chance still had her winter coat in – I’ve always found an animal’s late winter coat to be somewhat duller that it would be in the summer - so I’ve taken a bit of visual information from each photograph to get the colours I’ve chosen for this scratchboard.
