Illustrator Kent Barton works in scratchboard, linocut and woodcut, media that draw their lineage from graphic arts traditions that reach back into the early history of image making.
He uses that feeling to advantage in his images, both in subjects for which it seems particularly appropriate to use classical graphic approach, and in modern subjects that, when cast in that style, become somehow iconic and set out of time.
All three are media that require thoughtful preparation and involve a painstaking process.
Barton does “environmental” works, intended to be reproduced in large scale and incorporated as part of an architectural space. These are often collage-like panoramas of historical images. You can see some of them, and some images of the spaces in which they’re installed, both before and after, on the Art on a Grand Scale site of artist’s representative Richard Solomon.
For his more involved compositions, Barton works up his sketches with multiple layers of tracing paper, allowing him to reposition elements until the composition works properly (I’ve also seen comic book artists and other illustrators work this way).
For the final he renders in scratchboard, laying color over it in the final stages, frequently working back and forth between scratching out, inking in, and altering the surface with materials like steel wool.
