Scratch Board

Here's a cool little thing to do that's relatively inexpensive;  Scratchboard.  It comes in many colours, with just as many under-colours, but I really prefer black with white/silver underneath.

It is basically a white poster board that is painted over with black, and you use a little dry fountain-pen type tool to scratch away the black and reveal the lighter colour underneath.  I'm sure there is a PROPER way to do it, but I basically use cross hatching, like a pen and it's incredibly repetitive and very soothing.

It`s a bit hard on teh brain at first, as you`re drawing backwards from what you`re used to.  The more you draw, the whiter it gets, which SHOULDN`T be a difficult concept to wrap your brain around, but after years of making things darker and darker, it really is quite odd.  I also find it very challenging to not be able to sketch out the basic outlines first, because with scratchboard, there is no erasing!  This was my first attempt at RDJ, and meh, not very happy with it.

Here`s the second, which was better, but still not great.  Actually, I kind of lied above.  You CAN sort of erase small mistakes by using a black pen over them, but it doesn`t have the same sheen and texture that the original finsh does, so it`s really more like concealing than erasing.

Oh Bill Murray, I love you so!  It also is a challenge to find a good reference shot.  Even moreso than usual, a picture with a lot of texture and contrast seems to be best suited for this medium.  Scratchboard paper comes in both multi-packs of small sheets and single poster board sized large sheets, and only about five bucks or so per large sheet.  Most of these pics were done on about a quarter or third of a sheet.  I like to draw big. ;)