Marbling on Fabric

Ah, so this is the marbling class I took last week, taught by Lisa Thorpe and held at Bishop's Ranch just outside of Healdsburg. The results look most vibrant just after the fabric has been colored; things pale a bit when they become dry, but they are still fascinating.

The first two shown here I made at the beginning, when I did not know that you have to lay the fabric down on the water surface in one smooth motion. If you wait, you will end up with colorless strips as I have below.

I started out with making a collection of plain circles. (don't ask me why this first image refuses to center, ask Blogger!

Next I tried manipulating the edges of similar circles. This is where it gets fun, as you can make flowers, hearts, stars, etc, just be dragging a toothpick.

If you don't clean the surface of the water completely, little bits of previous sessions will be picked up in the corners. This may, or may not, be a bad thing.

The paint in some of my first efforts refused to spread over the surface and sank like a stone. We tried adding the substance used to encourage disbursement, to no avail, also more water, to no avail. What made the difference was adding a different color of paint. Then, especially once I started playing with black, the paints behaved and spread out and then intensified.

Another case of pareidolia, or faces seen in random things. Here I see a baboon, pursing its lips.

Here I dragged a row of toothpicks, getting swirls. If you swirl too much you will get pattern mush.

Four petalled flowers:

Swirls close up, when the blue was behaving better.

Another bright one

A thoroughly swirled one. These would make fun backgrounds for the Gelli plate art that I did a couple of weeks ago.....using a bunch of eucalyptus leaves as a mask and making the rest of the cloth a dark color.

Here I made 3 main circles and after a while started developing them individually, then I ruffled the edges at the end and splattered some random bits of blue on top.

Random swirl with dragon face or dragon claw. Here is the claw below.

I was only just starting to get creative with the technique when it was time to clean up. I now have almost all the supplies needed to try my own, I just have to plan on a massive session, because it takes a lot of prep work.

Below is a bonus raven. It was on top of the local Safeway roof, surrounded by starlings or blackbirds that gave a very good idea of how huge a raven actually is compared to other black birds. It was a horrible photo as shot, but raven silhouettes are so recognizable I could turn it into a patterned shadow and still get the point across.

Overall a good time was had and I came away from the session feeling my time had been well spent. Now to look at some videos on marbling, ebru and suminagashi, all similar techniques, to get some more ideas and to start to understand what are the differences.

Bishop's Ranch is often used as a religious retreat, but lots of other groups rent it for classes and multiple day activities. The power was out the day we were there, but the room was large and well lit by windows, so I barely noticed there were no lights.

I did try marbling once in high school.....with a bathtub filled with water and my mom's oil paints. There is no treatment needed for this kind of marbling, but it certainly left an interesting ring on the tub when I was done. I wonder if I ever cleaned it up or left if for my mom to do, in support of teen creativity.....