Featured Artist Sue Kroll

Artist Sue Kroll presents an amazing portfolio, all created in scratchboard. Visit her website for more of her work.

 

 

I have been in love with art all of my life, but it has been only in the past few years that I have been able to pursue my passion full time.

 

 

From the gorgeous refrigerator crayon drawings as a little schoolgirl to my new style, scratchboard, I cannot look at something without wondering how it would look as art.  Something just seems to click and I feel I must put my vision to canvas or board.

 

 

My creations over the years have been primarily acrylics, but recently I have turned to scratchboard as it offers the promise of detail that I had tried but failed to achieve to my satisfaction with paints.

 

 

Scratchboard is an old art form that is re-emerging as Fine Art. Initially it was just scratches into rocks and clay tablets. Over the centuries it developed into a style of engraving for printing, such as newspaper illustrations in the early 1900s, up to the style you now see in galleries and shows.

 

 

Scratchboard today is a flat surface such as paper or a thin board that is coated with a thin layer of white clay then covered in ink. A design is ‘etched’ or scratched through the ink exposing the white clay underneath. If you wish to add color it is done as washes as you continue to scratch, or all at once when it is finished.

 

 

My inspiration is nature, animals in particular.  At its best, or its worst, I try to capture a moment in time. It could be a mule yawning, or a cowboy being comforted by a friend, or “just” a horse caught in the sunlight. There is beauty in every thing we are in contact with almost every day. Usually we look, however briefly, but just don’t see.

 

 

Unafraid to try new styles and techniques, I strive to evolve as an artist; whether it is with acrylic paints, or my newest passion scratchboard art, or who knows just what the future might bring.

 

Sue Kroll invites you to follow her on Facebook.

 

 

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