The drawing represents a corner of a rectangular board made up of 1 cm square tiles. In this board, there are 17 white tiles. To find the area of the board, we need to determine the total number of tiles. Since the drawing represents a corner, we can assume that the board is a 4x4 square, which means it has 16 tiles. However, since there are 17 white tiles, there must be an additional tile outside of the corner. Therefore, the total number of tiles is 17 + 1 = 18. Since each tile has an area of 1 cm^2, the area of the board is 18 cm^2. Therefore, the correct answer is 35.