Paper Marbling

This past Saturday Antoine and I woke up at the butt-crack-of-dawn (actually, the sun wasn't even up yet...we're talking 5:30am people!) to get ready and make our way to Columbus for a paper marbling workshop. We were sleepy (we actually had to stop and get some coffee at one point, because we were so out of it), but excited for a full day of paper marbling.

There were a total of 6 people taking the workshop, including Antoine and myself. Antoine and I were the only two who had not previously taken a marbling class from Ann, or done any paper marbling period! So, we were the definite newbies of the group, which I was okay with. Antoine was also the only guy in the class and the only person there who wasn't involved with libraries or the arts...so he quickly became the teacher's pet!

After introductions, a discussion about the roots of paper marbling, and a brief tutorial on how to alum the paper (applying alum to the paper allows the acid-free archival quality paper to actually absorb the pigments) we were off! Each person shared a bath/tray with another person, so naturally Antoine and I were paired up!

Here's Antoine with his very first marbled paper! Which happens to be one of my favorites that he did!

Here's Ann demonstrating how to do a specific pattern.

Here I am placing pigments on top of the water!

There were various combs and tools you could use to achieve different patterns and designs.

Voila! It's kind of like magic when you lift up you paper from the bath...it never looks quite as amazing in the bath as it does on the paper! It just comes alive once it hits the paper!

Here's Antoine's first marbled paper!

Here's another one of my favorites of Antoine's.

He really did a great job, in fact, so many of his I like more than my own!

In the flyer for the class we were told that experimentation was welcome...so of course, I went overboard and brought 4 different types of cloth to try out, plus a ton of different papers. Here's an example of one of the types of cloth that I brought and that actually worked...some did not! But I really like this one!

Here's one of my papers that was actually done on a turquoise colored paper so it made the blues really stand out!

I also brought two pieces of mat board, one for Antoine and one for myself, to experiment with...here's mine! It's wild and crazy but I really like the way it turned out!

We had a great time, however, by the time 4:30pm rolled around we were exhausted! Did I mention there was no air conditioning and it was like 100 degrees in there?!? No? Well, it was!! It was very uncomfortable and draining, but most of the time we didn't mind because we were having so much fun! I cannot wait for my department to do paper marbling! Now that I'm a little more comfortable with it, I like to see if I can come up with some better stuff! What I have now I'll definitely use to make some books though!! And I'll probably be stealing a lot of Antoine's paper for books as well!