Engraving Art

Some years ago, I bought a bunch of plain scratchboard from Michaels. Just a blank black coating over a white surface. Same kind of stuff they gave us in art class in junior high. You'd think it would kind of be a standard thing that they'd keep in stock through the years... But no! For some odd reason, over the past few years this stuff has become next to impossible to obtain! Michaels now stocks nothing but pre-printed drawings over black coating over coloured foils or rainbow surfaces. And every art store I go to either doesn't carry scratchboard or else they only carry scratchbord (scratchboard's incredibly expensive cousin, which is a black coating over an actual board you could club someone over the head with). So it's either namby-pamby arts'n'crafts (with the emphasis on crafts) fare which is utterly useless for my purposes, or it's hardcore artist grade I can't afford and would be half-scared to use for fear of fucking it up. After months of searching I found what I thought I was looking for on the Dick Blick website, but what they sent me was thirty sheets of crap. Shiny, oddly textured black surface that flakes more than it scrapes, almost like a thin shell of nail polish, over white paper that just kind of peels at the first touch of the knife and gets all grubby from the black flakes.

I've since figured out the brand name of the decent-enough-for-my-needs board I used to use (Engraving Art). So now I'm trying to hunt it down online, so that at least I'll know what I'm ordering is useable. After far more searching than should be necessary for such a ridiculously basic art supply, I've located it. For roughly twice what I paid for the useless crap from Dick Blick. But I guess it's worth it if it actually lets me do what I need to do. I just resent that such a basic thing has become such a rare commodity. Seriously. It's infinitely easier to find glow-in-the-dark scratchboard than it is to find plain ole black'n'white.

I guess the point of this is... don't buy anything online if you haven't already tested the quality in person.

And buy a ton of black and white scratchboard from Engraving Art before it goes COMPLETELY extinct.