Soft Spoken. Scratchboard, 8 x 8 inches. Copyright 2009, Tania Nault.
I had a real struggle with the mane. It never occured to me when I started this one, but how do you depict an area, and an important one at that, in black, against a black background. I was saved in this instance because this lovely horse had some natural areas of grey/white strands in her mane.
She’ll be at the Regina Federation of Artists Spring Show and Sale this weekend, Wascana Centre, 2900 Wascana Drive, so please do come by and take a peek at her.
My day job has been a zoo lately and I feel like an over-rung dishrag when I get home, so I’ve been spending some time veggin’ in front of the television. The other night I came across a positively ancient broadcast of a CBC televsion show from the 60’s and 70’s: Telescope. This half-hour documentary focused on Canadian artist Alex Colville. The whole episode was rather interesting, once you got past the ridiculous clothing and hairstyles of course, but I think my favourite bit was a statement Colville made about where he would rather have his artwork would end up, in a museum or a private collection:
I prefer my work goes into a private collection where some person or small group of persons will look at it, live with it every day. It becomes a piece of daily life.
I just started this board from a reference photo on Stock.XCHNG by photograper Sue B:
Dappled Buckskin, work in progress. Scratchboard, 8 x 8 inches. Copyright 2009, Tania Nault.
I love the range of light and dark in the reference photo, but I think what really drew me in is the soft, gentle look in this horse’s eye.
Here’s an illustration of how following the advice of a good critique can help you improve your work. Now, I live in a relatively small city (Regina, Saskatchewan: population less than 200,000). And I only know of a handful of scratchboard artists in my area, something that makes getting a good critique by people who understand the medium something of a challenge. What’s an artist to do? WetCanvas! to the rescue!! Never been, you say… pity. Composition is composition, whatever your medium, but when you have a technical problem, like say, how to make the paint you put on your scratchboard horse look like actual paint….
Painted Warrior, work in progress. Scratchboard, 9 x 12 inches. Copyright 2009, Tania Nault.
That’s another problem entirely. The critique I received on WC! from more than one artists was, “Looks good, but it looks like the paint areas are floating above the horse.”
Hmm… not exactly the look I was going for. So, ask and ye shall receive, another artist, Diana Lee, rescued me with her advice on how to make the paint look more like an actual texture rather than just a colour:
Painted Warrior, work in progress. Scratchboard, 9 x 12 inches. Copyright 2009, Tania Nault.
I think it’s a big improvement - it looks like someone smeared paint on this horse, rather than simply photoshopping the colour overtop. I also added some of the blue to the shadow areas just to tie the whole thing together. I’ve set it aside for a couple days and will head on to the next thing.
Well, just because all my WC! scratchboard friends are asleep, recovering from Friday’s blockbuster opening of “Scratching the Surface” (sigh) and Saturday’s in-depth scratchboard demos (double sigh) in Indiana doesn’t mean I get to laze about. I’ve got paperwork to do - taxes (shudder). But before I do that, I’m pleased to let you know that my artistic drought is over! I don’t know if it was the anticipation of the opening weekend, or the frustration at being so far away from such an exciting event, but I have a new board to show you. I will be adding colour, but wanted you to see it in the black and white stage:
Painted Warrior, work in progress. Scratchboard, 9 x 12 inches. Copyright 2009, Tania Nault.
