How can I remove the worn white background of my scanned artwork?

[mr_wizard]

I have an old sketch made about 10 years ago. There isn't much shading but there are area's... actually, all over.... where the dirty paper from aging and wear really shows from my scanner. I scanned in top quality which shows the defects of the paper really well. How can I remove this so it looks like it's on a clean piece of paper? This is really important to me, I'll be submitting it for a competition. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[atomic tofu]

depends on what software you have and what it can do/can't do....

you could try selecting the "black" data, ie., the sketch lines in pencil/pen
you could adjust the black/white contrast...bleaching out the white areas more thoroughly
if they paper is yellowish, convert to grayscale...

i'll see if I can do something to show an example...later...in the week