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.
