Back in the days when I was younger and foolish enough to go into art supply stores without a minder, sometimes they sold "scrape" kits. The idea was there would be a pretty layer underneath– rainbow, foil, etc– and a black layer above. You'd use the enclosed blunt-yet-edged tool to scrape away some of the black and selectively reveal the pretty layer. The resulting effect even with the kiddie-tier kits really impressed me.
But kits cost money and get black debris everywhere, and also I'm bad at that kind of linocut-style reversal of positive and negative space. So I figured out how to make digital ones! Luckily it's dirt simple:
- Acquire a digital art program with layers. Like, nearly ANY digital art program will work, it just needs to have layers. Photopea and GIMP are free if you need somewhere to start!
- From top (higher on the layer list) to bottom (lower on the layer list) make these layers:
- "DRAW WITH WHITE" layer (Normal layer mode) - this starts empty
- "BLACK" layer (Multiply layer mode) - fill the entire layer with flat black
- "RAINBOW" layer (Normal layer mode) - this is the pretty layer! As you may guess I use a big swirly rainbow blob, but you can set it up as whatever you want as long as it's abstract, varied, and fills the whole layer
- Clip the "DRAW WITH WHITE" layer to the "BLACK" layer. Most programs have this option somewhere in the layer list; for Clip Studio it's "Clip to Layer Below" and has a somewhat ◳-lookin' button. In Photopea you right-click a layer and select "Clipping Mask". Etc. Either search engine how to do this for your program... OR IF THIS IS TOO WEIRD/ANNOYING, delete the "DRAW WITH WHITE" layer and instead of drawing with white, use the Eraser tool on the "BLACK" layer.
- ("Why even consider bothering with this???" Because drawing in white opens up more tools & editing options than erasing the black layer. But this is definitely down in the weeds of: what's your process, how much do you know about your art program, did you want to do interesting stuff with digital-exclusive tools compared to physical scrape kits or are you happiest Just Drawing Some Lines? There's no wrong answer here. Do whatever! 🎊)
- And... scrape! Either draw with pure white on the "DRAW WITH WHITE" layer or directly erase on the black layer to make the pretty layer peek through. "What do I draw?" Whatever you want! No gods no masters, etc. I personally love pointless abstract things just for fun.
And that's it! Go have fun!
