Scratchboard is a thin board (about 1/8” thick), coated with an under layer of white clay, topped with a final layer of black india ink.
First, I make a pencil line drawing that I transfer onto the black scratchboard with chalk.
Then I make an outline of the chalk guides with a sharp tool, like an exact-o blade.
Next, I scrape off what I want to be white and leave what I want to be black.
I take this black and white image to the computer, scan it onto watercolor paper, and then go back to my drawing board to watercolor the image traditionally. It’s a drawing method, not a printing one, even though it looks like a print when it’s done. It’s drawing by subtraction, more or less. I have more in common with a sculptor than with a print maker or a painter.
With this sturdy, somewhat nostalgic-looking medium, I tend to get hired for commercial jobs by people looking for organic, earthy illustrations. Now that I work in picture books, the same holds true. A publisher, for instance, probably wouldn’t pick me to illustrate a book on modern architecture. But I might get picked to illustrate a book on national parks or a biography of Audubon.
From start to finish, how long does it take you to finish an illustration?
Not counting the time it takes me to research and sketch (which accounts for many months of work on a book project), I can transfer, scratch, scan onto watercolor paper, and then finally watercolor the average 8-by-10-inch piece (I work small—scratchboard lets you) in about eight hours. When doing a book, I tend to work on illustrations in batches, so I am scratching three, scanning three, then watercoloring three. I can save my hands (and my brain) from too much wear and tear from just one part of the process this way.
What was particularly challenging about creating the illustrations for A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet?
The challenge and the thrill came from the fact that I was a newcomer to this landscape. I was not born a grasslander; tallgrass flora and fauna are so completely different from the plant and animal forms I know from the Pacific Northwest. So the initial research was very exciting. But the frustrations would come when some animals or insects I thought were natives and wanted to include would turn out, after research, to be introduced species. Or maybe they were too much of a “generalist” species for a book highlighting specifically prairie wildlife. We wanted to keep true to a real tallgrass environment. Eventually, things fell into place. I started to “know” that fox snake, that badger, butterfly weed, and gentian somehow. I did find out after we moved here that a bunch of my ancestors had stopped in Iowa for a couple of generations before moving further west. Some are buried in the lowlands surrounding the magnificent Loess Hills near Little Sioux, Iowa. So maybe my affinity to the prairie comes atavistically!
Aromatic aster, Aster oblongifolius
In the fall, after most plants have finished blooming, aromatic aster opens its flowers across the prairie. Each bushy plant has hundreds of bright purple flowers with yellow centers.
Claudia McGehee, A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet
Claudia McGehee, author and illustrator of Where Do Birds Live?, A Woodland Counting Book and A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and illustrator of The Iowa Nature Calendar
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