Hyper-realistic art is incredibly impressive. And American artist Cathy Sheeter sets the bar high with her artwork, in which she creates realistic scratch drawings on ink coated boards. Scratchboard is a unique medium. Discover more about how this form of art is done and see Cathy's mesmerizing work below.
Cathy works in the medium of Scratchboard. It helps bring her animals and wildlife to life in a hyper-realistic way that no other medium can.
It is hard to believe that Cathy's realistic animal artwork is created just from scratches into an ink coated board, but that's exactly how each work is drawn.
Scratchboard starts with a solid black ink coated board.
The ink is then scratched away with sharp tools to reveal a layer of white clay that is beneath the ink.
The more you scratch into the surface the lighter that area will become. This enables Cathy to create a range of tones.
Some of the tools she uses include a xacto knife, sandpaper, tattoo needles and fiberglass brushes.
These tools leave quite fine marks, making the drawing more realistic, especially when drawing fur and feathers.
Once she scratches out the animal in black and white she can choose to leave it that way or color in the scratches with transparent colored inks.
