What is "cardscratching"?

Cardscratching is a sub-genre of card art where-in the ink on the card is scratched away to reveal the paper material below. By varying the texture and depth of the strokes, the amount of ink that is scratched off can be controlled to create quite detailed etchings. On occasion, I have experimented with adding color to the scratched off areas.

To this point, I've found it fun to recreate well-known, non-human characters. I stick to non-human mainly because I'm terrible at reproducing faces.

What cards do I use?

When I first started, I used the black Madison Rounders deck from Ellusionist. I would often try to incorporate one or both of the Madison logos into the design of the etching. The scratched playing card featuring Scrat from Ice Age is a good example of this - I have Scrat stretched between the two Madison logos reaching for that ever elusive acorn (see right).

However, sometimes, I make slight modifications to or completely cover up the Madison logo. I do this using a black gel pen, which seems to match the ink and give me better control than a fine point black Sharpie marker or pen.

Now I use the Black NOC decks from The Blue Crown.

An example of integrating the card back design as part of the scratch art.