I’ve just completed this scratchboard of a zebra which is from one of my own photos of a zebra, not in Africa but at Werribee Open Plains Zoo in Victoria, Australia. I’m showing the finished piece first and then some of the work in progress to show that my work goes through many ugly stages before I finish it. It’s a real process of layering with scratchboard and definitely blows out of the water the theory that with scratchboard, you need to get it right first time. Heck, it takes me many many layers before I’ve got it remotely right.

So here are the stages starting from simply scrubbing off black ink with the fibreglass brush and steel wool

Now I simply add diluted India Ink over the whole piece (with an airbrush but a normal brush is fine too). I’ve gone a little darker in the shadow areas to make it easier later.

Now I get out my fibreglass brush again to start working on the light and fur.

And finally, having ‘pushed and pulled’ a few times (added and removed ink to get that layering – depth – effect) I add the grass in a very simple and almost impressionistic style. This is achieved by spraying India Ink a little darker in the shadow created by the zebra, and fading it out as we get further up the board, and then using the fibreglass brush to remove the ink, trying to represent grass as I go.

I’ve finally completed a new piece. It’s a scratchboard that’s been a long time in the making with a busy life at the moment and a lot of detail in this. This should really be titled “Old Man of San Diego” because it’s from seeing one of the orangutans at San Diego Zoo in California when I was there last July. “Old Man of San Diego” just doesn’t have that ring to it since this is a male Bornean orangutan, the ones with the wide cheek flaps which show dominance to other males. In all the photographs I took of this awesome male, his eyes are not visible, too much in shadow, so I used some artistic licence to create a sad portrait. It’s one of those conundrums – we need to see primates like orangutans in zoos to highlight their plight in the wild, massive reduction in numbers due to hunting, the pet trade and loss of habitat through land exploitation, and one day maybe zoos will be the only place we will be able to see them, but of course we also don’t want to see them in zoos simply because they don’t belong there. It should also be noted that orangutans have particularly sad faces but that bears no relation to their mood. It is simply due to their facial muscles and as artists we tend to humanise animals too much, something I am guilty of but I do it for a reason – to make people stop and think.

12″ x 16″

I have a lovely niece living in England called Georgia. I got to know her a bit on my recent trip there in July and decided to do a portrait of her. She’s a bright and bubbly character and a lot of fun and I’ve tried to convey that in my art. I know she received the portrait in time for her birthday the other day so I can now show it on here without spoiling her surprise.

I also have a couple of artist friends who have gone on to become tattoo artists. Well, I also have, though maybe not in the way you might think. This portrait is almost 100% completed with a tattoo needle. I used a seven stack, which is seven needles soldered together in a row and this creates a nice even texture, perfect for representing skin on the scratchboards I use. I’m including a couple of close-ups to show this texture. The hair was done with my trusty fibreglass brush.

If you click the images they will show up larger. The actual portrait is quite small, 8″ x 10″

I’ve always wanted to do one of those large close up cat portraits that so many artists have done but I never had the right reference. I wanted to work from my own experiences and I finally got the perfect shot. This is Assiqua, a female Sumatran Tiger in our local (Adelaide) zoo and I caught her licking her lips as she looked at me. Note how the whiskers on her right are all pushed up by her tongue.

This is a 20″ x 16″ scratchboard and is created by using 80% fibreglass brush, 15% steel wool to get the backlit areas and 5% blade to get the whiskers and hairs at the edge. In reality there were no highlights in the eyes but I used artistic license to add more life. She is a magnificent animal and I really hoped to convey a sense of drama with her as if to say “You come one step closer and you’re mine”!