Onward....

This is the fuzzy center of the clematis after the flower is gone. Our clematis bloomed for a long time this year and I was intrigued by the centers as they were growing out.

Having just about exhausted my ideas for doing different marbling, when this bunch of fabric is done, I will hang up my marbling tools for awhile and switch to making something with all this fabric! That part of my creative juices is coming to the surface. Probably the drive behind all the fabric is a need to have a large variety of textures and colors to choose from when designing. Having never met a color I didn't like, the rainbow is my paintbox.

Today I only made it through two monochromatic printings (red and orange) before I got bored with that and went back to many colors. Another observation is that I think opaques are colors to stay away from. When the Golden speaker was discussing paints, he said that the opaques would always dull up colors and best to work with transparents. I now agree and think that some of the duller pieces had more opaques in them. I still will use the white as it gives some good separation of color as long as it doesn't get irretrievably mixed up with the others which sometimes happens when scraping across the top of the tray to get the look I am liking.

Of course, I ALWAYS have to try just one more thing. Today's was doing a little imitation of the Turkish more traditional marbling. I made monochromatic green backgrounds and then just made some flowers on top. I did one like that and then decided I liked very abstract distorted flowers more. Unfortunately, with such a large tray, it is difficult to move fast enough to keep the colors from separating a bit but it does somewhat resemble what I was going for.


This was my first attempt at flowers which was okay but I didn't do any manipulation between the flowers and they look like flowers so more was called for.
This was probably the most successful of my attempts but there was not enough concentrated color for my tastes.

This was was just too even for my tastes and because there were so many spots to work on, the background started to separate. But this has a whole new direction for me.

I will be back to dyeing next week and have a feeling that all this marbling will have an impact on how I do some of my dyeing as well -- we shall see. Marcia and I are going for light neutrals with this dye session and will take one of the pallettes we developed before and will use lower concentrations of our "browns" which we will overdye the warm colors with. I warned Marcia we could get some real uglies with this but you can always overdye!

Okay, So I Need an Intervention

Phyllis from my Ruth McDowell class just checked my blog trying to find my pelican and she suggested that an intervention was in order! Hard to find the pelican amongst all the marbling! Of course I was at it again today but I am slowing down a bit. At this point I am trying to trash the size but it just keeps working along no matter what I do to it. It was a much more random day today than yesterday. Working with the same colors for any amount of time is just plain boring!

My order went into Dick Blick last night after moving a bunch of "would be nice to have's" out as even I don't want to spend that much on paints! Having gone to the Art Store Saturday and getting some paints to tide me over showed how very expensive they are for the Golden paints. I did get some alum there and they again have methocel although twice as much as Pro Chem's price.

When working with paints, I quickly revert back to the palette of my childhood when I was taking art lessons -- primaries plus raw umber and burnt sienna and some white and black.

I did buy some of the Dyna Flow paints that Sarah uses and they are nice and fast and I now see why she gets her nice feathering as they do that when used with some of the slower colors. I think if I was using a smaller tray I would be able to encourage longer tendrils of color. Definitely forget those admonishments to only use one brand of paint when marbling!! Mix and match is definitely the way to go!

A dip into some fall colors today inspired by my neighbor's pictures from his trip last week. I love the fall colors where you get all the brilliant warm colors with a bright blue sky and the evergreens.

The more standard green marble.

More of the same but I can never have enough greens.

As part of my transition back to normality from the frenzied fabric marbling of the past week, I am going to TRY tomorrow to just do a couple using only ONE color but with different values. I finally just threw out my old size (three days old) as I have discovered that so much pigment gets into the size that eventually you get an overall staining of the predominant really muddy color. That is why some of my pieces are a little duller than I would like so I think I will change the size maybe every other day unless I trash it earlier. I haven't used but a few drops of surfactant this whole last week.

I will finish off the fabric I have alum-ed and then will start working on some pieces to use this fabric. I think that Photoshop will be an excellent tool to design some relatively simple pieces with the marbled fabric. I might try importing some of the fabric into EQ6 as well and try that. Lots of possibilities!

More Marbling Adventures - This Should Scare All My Faithful Readers Away!

These first two were done using the eye dropper method of dropping color. If you compare it to the images below, you can see that there are broader areas of color and more definition here but less blooming (which gives a more wiggly feel to the fabric).

Well, back to the tray but I am running out of some colors, so will hit the Art Store this afternoon and get some more (as well as finally putting in an order to Dick Blick who has the best prices for Golden!) I never thought I would use up those Golden Paints! I am concentrating again on adding lots of light values and have gone back to trying the eye dropper again. It gives you a very different look (more open). I am also moving to smaller and smaller "things" to move the colors around. The piece of foam core board that I am using now is only about 6 inches across while my tray is 18 x 24 inches (a very nice size to get a fat quarter). With the eyedropper method, you don't get as much blooming which causes some nice distortion but you get a more "artistic" look rather than a solid color look (except close up where the solid is obviously not solid at all). Today I started with just blues and purples as I want some to use in the Bird of Paradise.

I shrunk these next two down as you must be bored with pictures of marbled fabric by now but I can't help myself. I'll need a ten-step program pretty soon! I switched to a blue/purple theme today and then added in turquoise as the day wore on -- in honor of my friend Marcia.







This one was kind of interesting as I removed color with a thin strip after I had swirled it around a bit. What was most interesting was my brush cleaner water where I kind of squeegeed the paint I took off -- if I had a small piece of cloth hanging around, I would have taken a print. You can probably see this better if you double click.

This was done as the first print after lunch where some leftover color was left to move around in the tray. Because of the surface tension, it tends to congregate together somewhere near the middle. You get some interesting prints this way. However, eventually, the paint dries out on top and then it won't adhere to your cloth so there is a finite amount of time you can leave this.

I'm Losing My Marbles

Okay, that was actually a bad pun but the weather continues to be uncooperative and I got rained on again -- unfortunately after I hung out the alum-ed fabric (it was nice and sunny). So I am almost out of alum yet again so will have to find a new source as I can't seem to get it in quantity locally (I have yet to try one more place).

Aha! I found out a source of alum also called aluminum sulphate. Now you can buy it in the spice section of your supermarket for 2 ounces for $3 or $4 (which would be enough to soak about one yard of fabric) or you can buy it from a dye supplier for about $3/lb plus shipping (not too bad but the dye supplier I use was out of it for awhile) or you can buy it from your garden supply store!! I knew there had to be another source -- 4 lbs for $7 -- it is the chemical that you use to make hydrangea blue and also for other acid loving plants! I have yet to try it and it seems a little bigger granules but it should work. Of course it is something you put on plants in the spring time so not a lot of it around but I did find it. I still want to try one of the Mennonite owned bulk food stores as there is lots of pickling done in the late summer and fall and it is also used for making the pickles crispy!

So I have soaked about 15 yards of fabric now which will translate into about 60 pieces which is about all I can do in 4 or 5 days. It is not a good idea to leave the alum on the fabric for too long. One of the by-products of dissolving alum in water is a mild solution of sulfuric acid -- not too good on fabrics if you remember college chem classes!

Today, I am updating the experiment yet again and think I have hit upon something and the variation was also mentioned on the Marbling list (great minds). I mixed up some plain acrylic extender with water as that will keep the paints more separate (it should act like another paint). That was not totally successful (probably would be if I added some surfactant but not ready to do that yet with this nice clean size) so I added some pearlescent white instead -- now that worked just fine and I like the print that I got. It is more open and brighter so we shall see -- as soon as I get more fabric prepared. The Marbling list person just suggested using a little surfactant greatly diluted to keep the paints separate (ala Suminigashi) but I really try to keep surfactant out of the equation as long as possible as that just trashes the tray too quickly.

I am liking my new experiments. I have just been using up the colors that I have mixed over the past few days and just playing.



I decided to try to just take a piece of foam sheet which was very wobbly and just stroke it back and forth across the paints to see what happened. Kind of like it!


This is specifically for my bird of paradise piece when I get started on it. All these fabrics have to sit for a couple of weeks before I can really wash them.

October RAFA Meeting!

This is Donna showing her new doll that she made -- it was charming! She also had a very large pile of hand dyed fabrics -- I think we have a convert!!

Well, it took me away from my marbling but that was okay as it was most enjoyable! We are going to be doing another exhibit at the Rochester Area Council for the Arts in January where I will show the pelican piece. We turned in our pieces for the Old Forge show as well which is coming up very soon. We had lots of show and tell especially exhibiting what people did in the Cynthia Corbin class many took in September while I was at the Ruth McDowell workshop.

I did get to show off my pelican and my marbled fabrics which a few people were interested in! Some even went through the whole pile of 50 pieces!!

In the meantime, I am awaiting the weather improving so I can hang out some more fabric to dry after applying the alum.


This is Marcia happily showing her piece that she started in the Cynthia Corbin (CC) class.
This is a new member, Margaret Reek, who is showing a very interesting landscape with lots of texture. It happens to be of St. Mary's lake at Glacier. It was very cloudy the day I saw that particular view with the island!


This is Sarah showing what she did with some of her marbled fabric! She loves the marbling too so we chatted a lot!
This is Val's piece from the CC class.

This is Barb's piece from the Rosalie Dace class earlier this year.


This is Barb's CC piece.

This is one of Charmaine's CC pieces -- very cool.
These next two are Charmaine's as a result of the Rosalie Dace class. They are two of four to be developed.

More from the Mad Marbler

More marbling but what did you expect! I am running out of prepared fabric again so will have to do some more prep and the weather has not been cooperating at all and hanging any kind of yardage in the basement is really not an option (although if I can get it partially dry outside, it is okay).

Anyway, more of the same but I started moving toward the browns and a couple of the pieces look really yucky which isn't too much of a surprise. I did dump in a bunch more fresh methylcel as well as it was getting low again. Still haven't used any surfactant and have relied on using the more aggressive paints to perk up the less aggressive ones. Have gotten some great second strikes from the same size so that has been fun. Also played with modifying my compression style a little bit today and really liked the results although the color was a little muddy -- the theory seemed to work!

You can see the muddied up prints in these next two but there are retrievable portions and they are much easier to cut up!




These next two were second prints taken from the same size as the muddier prints and I like what is going on here. Double click on the image to see more detail.

Manic Material Marbling or Taking Textiles to Textured Treasures

These first two pieces are traditional stone patterns just whisking down layers of color. They both have a look of background to me with water or sky and trees. The first looks like water lillies from a distance (at least to me).

Ya gotta double click on these to see the detail and they aren't even ironed yet!




Well, fabric all ironed and ready to go for another day of marbling and experimenting. Of course, the first experiments were dead wrong but you often learn more from those than the ones that work. So the first couple of pieces are so-so, but oh so easy to cut up! For the past week or so, I have been concentrating on the compression technique for getting good organic looking pieces with lots of color. The compression technique I have been using is to take a piece of foam board the width of the tray (so you can fit it inside) and drag it across the size carefully starting at one edge. If it skips a bit, that just makes it more interesting. No rocket science here. I have also used a small piece of balsa wood as well.

So what I found out today was:


(1) you can get more color on top of the size by using the whisks than with the eye dropper no matter how careful you are,


(2) the more color the better for the compression technique as part of the fun is the blooming up of colors that had dropped to the bottom when squeezed out by the more aggressive later paints. When they are still attached by that thin thread, the colors will follow the thread up to the top again and you get great organic patterns.


(3) don't stroke across the colors more than once as mud ensues pretty quickly.


(4) make sure you have a good variety of values.


(5) if you have a surface that looks icky because of some of the colors dropping and being mishapen, you have the perfect surface for using the compression technique.


(6) if you have managed to get a lot of color on top of the size and you have used the compression technique, you can usually get at least two prints -- even got three from one. The prints look nothing alike!


These two prints were the first and second taken from one tray without adding any color in between.





These two were also the result of taking two prints from the same tray without doing anything in between. Notice the second has a lot more red which has more room to spread now that the first print took up most of the blue and green.