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I made some natural inks and watercolors a while back and finally tried them on my acorn woodpecker sketch from a few months ago. I tried making my own vegan scratchboard, which did not go well, so I ended up trying out Ampersand "claybord", which was nothing like what I'm used to using. It was so hard I got streaks and shines, and it was too thin to scratch into much. I tried removing some ink with alcohol and got a happy accident of texture..
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The texture reminded me of the holes in their granary trees.
I was able to use a bit of ink made from weld flowers, along with cochineal red for the crest. I added citric acid to the cochineal to make it more red than purple. I inked the bird with oak tannin, which is waterproof, but it ended up being pretty streaky so I tried to even it out with burnt umber and ultramarine.
Here's an image of my failed clayboard. I guess I'll have to try the recipe using the traditional rabbit glue
Anne Montano