Scratchboard Art

Make your own scratch art paper!

Have you ever tried creating art with scratchboards? This unique type of art involves carefully scratching away a dark upper layer of ink to reveal colorful patterns underneath - it’s kind of like drawing in reverse! Scratchboard art creates very beautiful and detailed images: check out this website for some examples! https://scratchboardsociety.org/member-gallery/ Try scratchboard art for yourself by making your own scratch art paper!

You will need:

- Postcard sized sturdy paper (white cardstock is ideal)

- Crayons

- Painter’s tape

- Paintbrushes or paint rollers

- Black tempera paint

- Liquid laundry detergent

- Shallow bowls

- Toothpicks, forks, pencils, or some other item that you can use to scratch off the upper layer

Step 1: Have an adult help you cover your work surface and tape down your paper so that it lays flat and won’t move as you color and paint - this can get messy!

Step 2: Cover your entire piece of paper with crayons! You can use one color or as many as you want, but make sure to fill in all the white space.

Step 3: Have your adult mix together an equal amount of black paint and laundry detergent in a small bowl.

Step 4: Cover the entire paper that you just colored with the paint mixture - you might need several coats of paint to fully cover up all the colors you used.

Step 5: Wait for the paint to dry. As you wait, try sketching some ideas on regular paper!

Step 6: Once dry, use toothpicks, forks, or some other tools to scratch the cards and create drawings, revealing the bright crayons underneath.

Toothpicks and kitchen skewers work great for this activity, but you can use just about anything as your scraping tool - try different objects to see what kinds of different lines you can create. With your adult’s help, search online for different examples of scratchboard art for inspiration - scratchboard can look very realistic, or very abstract!

When you’ve finished your masterpiece, share it with us! Tag the Des Plaines History Center on Facebook or Twitter, or email us a photo directly at contact@desplaineshistory.org - we can’t wait to see what you create!