Scratchboard artist featured in 'Dog Show'

Artist Jennifer Hartwig's first introduction to scratchboard art was in a high school class using scratch-paper. Life intervened and she didn't pick up the medium again until 12 years ago. Hartwig, a Sisters resident, is now a scratchboard artist specializing in wildlife and pet portraits, and will be a featured artist in the seventh annual celebration of "The Dog Show: A Fetching Display of Canine Imagery."

An artists reception, including Hartwig, will be held at Sisters Art Works on Friday, July 24, from 4 to 7 p.m. Sisters Art Works will host The Dog Show from July 24 through September 24 at 204 W. Adams Ave.

Scratchboard art is a form of direct engraving. Pictures are created using a sharp scribing tool. The panel starts out solid black, and then the artist scratches to expose a layer of white clay under black ink.

"I use pressboard, and on that is baked ceramic and then the ceramic is sprayed over with India ink. The ceramic creates the white which has a reflection and gives a glowing effect and depth. I get the color in my work by using colored inks to the exposed white areas," Hartwig says.

Scratchboard artists use a wide variety of tools to create different textures in the artwork, but the primary tool is usually a standard craft knife or scalpel for line work. Hartwig's primary tool is an X-ACTO® knife. Large and complex pieces can take hundreds of hours to be completed, with many layers of tiny scratches covering the board.

Hartwig's very first re-entry back into scratchboard art was a picture of a penguin.

"It was in 2007 when I was working at a company in Canada and a co-worker of mine saw a piece that I had worked on years before and asked if I could do penguins for her nephew's bedroom," she recalled. "It was during the time when the movie 'March of the Penguins' was popular. Everyone at my job liked it so much that many people started commissioning me to create more individuals pieces - from motorcycles to birds. I have really done a lot of birds, and eagles have been the most popular.

"It was empowering for me as an artist to really get back into creating art," she said. "For me it's working from the darkness of black on the scratchboard and coming back into the light, like the light of life. As I got more confident, color started coming back into my life as in my pieces when I experimented with colored ink."

Friends and family commissioned her to create images of their beloved pets on scratchboard.

"The first dog I ever did was a boxer in 2008, and one of my favorite pieces is of my dog Chester, a schnoodle. He lived 12 years and I did it as a tribute to him," she said.

Hartwig, who has been a Sisters resident for three years, is already finding her niche within the art world.

In 2013 Hartwig displayed her scratchboard art of a cougar at the Sisters Library Annual Art Exhibit and won the people's choice award. She then entered another piece, called "Sisters," of two horses, at the juried art show that is part of The Country Fair at Sisters Episcopal Church in 2013 and won another people's choice award. She then sold "Sisters" at the My Own Two Hands silent auction. Hartwig is a member of the Sisters Art Association.

"Her work is extraordinary and she has a different-type medium that really stood out," said Sisters artist and Dog Show organizer, Kathy Deggendorfer. "Every artist looks at dogs in a different way, and Jennifer really captures the light. To me it's a reverse

medium."

"One of the pieces I am entering in The Dog Show is 'Bliss,' a dog that lived in Alberta, Canada," Hartwig said.

Hartwig will be teaching an introduction to scratchboard art workshop at Alpenhimmel Creative Art Emporium in Sisters sometime in the fall.

To see more of her art work visit her website at http://www.scratchlife.com.