These decidedly different drawings are created with scratchboard. This is a rigid board that has been coated with a layer of fine white clay, and then a very smooth, thin layer of matte black ink. Once a sharp tool is used to scratch a line into the ink coating, the white beneath is revealed in a crisp and beautiful contrast to the inky black.
The medium is the perfect reverse of pen-and-ink; there, the artist is building form by adding black ink to a white paper to define shadows and darks. With scratchboard, the artist must invert her thinking and draw the lights, not the shadows. Different values are created by thousands of parallel and hatching lines at different spacings.
Unlike pen-and-ink, however, scratchboard has exquisitely sharp lines because there is no 'bleeding' of a liquid (such as ink or paint) onto an absorbent surface. There is simply no other artistic medium like this.
I am fascinated by watching an image emerge from the dark surface as I scratch away; the drama of the black and white is breathtaking for me. Sometimes it's difficult to stop because the results are so satisfying!
Once a drawing is finished and sprayed with matte fixative, it has a velvety surface that can be displayed without glass, thus allowing much better appreciation of the subtle and beautiful lines and values.