Sometimes You Eat the Bear....

And sometimes the bear eats you! That is how I feel about the marbling today! I was getting great results yesterday but the size was getting trashed and I was having to add more and more surfactant to get the paints to float (the surfactant decreases the surface tension of the paints). So I did one or two more prints today and then decided to use nice clean new size, new paints and new whisks!! Well nothing went right!! I couldn't get the paints to sit on the size for anything! I was adding almost the whole bottle of surfactant and still nothing. I managed to get two or three very pale prints that aren't very exciting but that was it!

All I did differently was warm up the size a little bit with some warm water which I think was a mistake. Add this to the fact that I kept adding surfactant to the paints which probably contaminated the size big time. I have now gotten rid of all the paints in the little cups that I was using and washed all my whisks (or really have them soaking right now). Very, very frustrating to say the least. Reading a book sounds like an appropriate counter measure to me (and not a book on marbling).



Elin always had us leave the size sit covered when we were through with it at lunch or the end of the day. The first thing after lunch or in the morning would be to take a print of what was there as you do get some amazing results from the paints frolicking while you aren't there!

This was my last print with the old size which was pretty cool (the picture is a little fuzzy).

This is the best I could do with the new size though. I wonder if the yellow was causing all the problems!

As you can see, something has trashed this size -- some wayward surfactant hiding somewhere!
Again, a pale sister to the prints from the previous days.