I Love A Challenge

"A few years ago I took a one-day workshop from my talented artist friend Laurie on setting up still life arrangements to use as painting references. I brought a variety of game pieces, since I have loved games since childhood. Laurie provided lighting, draping, and various wood blocks to create height. Finally I have used my still life photo to create a scratchboard painting.

Games themselves provide me with challenges but this artwork was my most challenging scratchboard to date - thus the title. The variety of objects necessitated many different scratching techniques to depict the numerous surface textures and to compose an interesting arrangement of values."

The pieces in the still life represent 10 different games to me (two for the Queen of Spades) and some may represent different games to you - like the dice and the dominoes. My list includes chess, Hearts and Old Maid for the playing card, poker, Mexican Train dominoes, Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Mystery Date (a favorite in my pre-teen years!), and backgammon for the dice."

I Love A Challenge critique by Kimberly Winkle
"Scratchboard is a tedious process. You really have to strategize your attack -- once you remove a mark, you can't go back and put it back. So, this artist has done a really great job of showing all these textures: the texture of the blanket, the wood grain of the scrabble pieces, the brilliant white around the playing cards. Also, the way she understands space and form. She has dealt with the foreshortening of objects like the game pieces and poker chips, the way the dominoes are twisted and turning in space. She understands how to capture space and how objects work in space. It's a very interesting composition. I'm also curious what inspired her to include game pieces. I really like the title: Was it the challenge of the piece or the challenge of the game? This person definitely has a strong command of the material."