Botanical scratchboard for the win!

It was an absolute thrill in August to wake up to a congratulatory email from Art and Color 365 magazine, letting me know that my scratchboard piece 'Garden delight' was selected as winner of their 'Drawings' competition! Hundreds of incredible entries are received from all around the world for their art competitions so it's always an honour to be featured in their finalist works but to win is just...WOW! Very thankful to the Art and Color 365 team for the honour and the wonderful article received as part of the 1st place package. Here's the excerpt from their magazine, but the whole edition is full of inspiring art, including fellow Aussie Craig Williams with his beautiful bird art! Check it out on their website https://www.artandcolor365.com/

And if you keep scrolling after the article, I've added a few pics of how I started working out my composition for 'Garden delight', plus a short little timelapse of the scratching process - enjoy!

This is the very technical set up I had to work out the composition - a black sheet draped over my drawing board, and a bulldog clip to secure my garden specimen to my bendy phone holder so I could photograph it in different positions :)

Here's a quick little timelapse of the various layers of stippling involved!