One of my students who has already set up a marbling space suggests that people start small (vat-wise). I think that is a great idea. It gives you time to experiment with how you set up and what works in your situation. You can use the paper for cards or origami projects.

You can get a small “vat” very cheaply. Look at cookie sheets or foil pans at the grocery store. What you are looking for is relatively perpendicular sides so that the combs will work to the edges and a depth of about 1 inch. You may be able to do it with less depth, but I’m not sure. Marbling is a surface art so you could give it a try

I have a Twin Cities source for vats when you are ready to try something bigger. These vats are plexiglass and can be made to the size of your choice. The source is Cal Linzmeyer at Triple C Technologies, Inc. at 344 Taft St. N.E., Minneapolis, MN.  Cal normally does Custom Display Fixtures so to dial him in to what you are looking for mention my name. Just before the first covid lock down he did a group order for us of large tanks (19 x 25) and small tanks (the small were the size of our teaching tanks – 16 x 20) — all in 1/4 inch plexiglass.

What I think “marks” a vat as a marbling vat is that they have a hole in one corner. When you start a marbling session you tape the hole (clear packing tape works for that). I actually use tape on both the inside and outside and criss-cross the tape over the hole from both sides as well. Probably overkill but I hate it when the vat leaks. Another tip is to make yourself a tab by folding one edge of the tape back on itself; that makes getting the tape off much easier. Finally I tape over the edges at the top of the vat, down onto the outside of the edge. so I don’t have as much trouble with the combs getting stuck on the tape. I have also been known to tape the tape ends down!

Measure how much your vat will hold. I would measure in cups of water. A gallon = 16 cups and you mix 2 T of carrageenan per gallon of water. That will tell you how much carrageenan to mix. While I now have a blender that is dedicated tomixing carrageenan, when I started mixing at home I used a hand held mixer that I used regularly in my kitchen. Just make sure that the mixer and blades has been well rinsed after you washed them in soap. REMEMBER, soap is not the marbler’s friend so just really rinse whatever you use carefully to get all the residual soap off! Also remember that you probably want to mix your carrageenan at least 12 hours before you marble. That is so that the bubbles are mostly out of the mixture. The carrageenan is somewhat hard to dissolve so sprinkle a little on top of the water and then use the mixer and then sprinkle more.

If you mix 1 gallon but the vat will only take about 1/2 gallon, save the rest in the refrigerator or freezer. That will make it last much longer. You know when it goes bad because it smells like fish. If you freeze it plan that it will take quite a while to thaw and you want it about the same temperature as the rest of your equipment and paint when you use it.

Carrageenan and alum — I use Galen Berry as a supplier of carrageenan (www.marbleart.us) – good quality, good price and fast – you have to call during certain hours listed on the website – 1/2 lb is currently about $25 and 1 lb is about $50 for carrageenan. Alum is about $5.

Recipes: 2 T of carrageenan per gallon water – 1/2 teaspoon of alum per cup of water

For an alum applier you can use a sponge, a microfiber car wash sponge, or a wool pad painter (Wooster).

A sheet/plank of some sort for transporting the paper to rinse after you get it off the tank and maybe too dry. Currently I use a plastic corrugated sheet that you often see used for lawn signs that you can buy at a Home Depot type store. I think it helps to tape the ends of the sheet with duck tape so that water doesn’t get into the sheet and drip everywhere.

A drying rack – I have used wooden clothes drying racks or you can buy bungee cords with butterfly clips (look for “packable clothes line” if that would work better for you). You are probably going to want some towels underneath and maybe a plastic barrier (trash bags taped together) under them so that drips don’t get on your floor/rug. This is where a wallpaper tray (see note below) or a dish rack can come in handy to let the sheets drip there first and then move them to the drying rack.

Paint containers – you can use cups and short pva pipes to keep them stable to begin (pva pipes can be found in the plumbing section) but now I use glass jars (4 oz with wide mouth) which I bought at Uline (cost with shipping about $30).
Brushes are called “glue brushes” and are inexpensive.
For droppers I now use plastic disposable transfer pipettes (not environmentally good but much easier to find than glass droppers — can be used for a couple of times if rinsed well) Glass droppers if you have a source will last for years and clean up better.

Combs: You can make your own pretty easily by using insulation foam board (at your local Home Depot like store) and plastic roller pins. I also bet that you could use wood strips (again the local Home Depot) and a normal home drill to drill holes for the plastic roller pins and then glue them in with a silicon based glue (something used on boats) so they will not fall apart in the water.

Paper: You can never tell what paper will work and what won’t because paper makers tend to add stuff to their paper that makes it hard for the alum to be absorbed. Buy a few sheets or a small pad and see how it works.

Note: While it is very helpful to have a water source close and to recognize that you will have wet sheets of paper to move around to dry, you can reduce the amount of water you need. You can do that by using a wallpaper water tray. They are long, narrow containers that are 3-4 inches deep and not very expensive. You can marble your sheet and put it there to drain and then just use a little water in a spray bottle where there is off-set of paint. Yes, you have to empty the tray fairly often but it makes working away from a water source possible. You do not have to rinse your sheets of carrageenan. We do that at MCBA because we don’t want a lot of carrageenan on the floor for people to slip on.

OK, that is a listing of the stuff that I use for marbling. I would take a day to make combs, a day to gather the other equipment needed, and some time to think about where and how you will use it all to marble. Then, you too can marble!

The trick is to completely cover the surface of your tank with color. Originally I was taught to “flood” the tank meaning to put down a large number of drops on one color to start. This takes that kind of flooding to a new level. Start by making a row of drops down the middle of the tank — make sure, however, that each drop you put down is within the last drop you made. Here is a picture of my tanks after that row of drops down the center using white paint.

Next put a row of paint down each side of the middle row, again making sure that the drops are inside the drops in the center row of drops. It doesn’t matter how far inside, just that they are inside. In the picture below you can see the newest row (the lighter color drops) and that they are well within the first set of middle drops because you can see the edge of those drops at the top of the picture. Now your tank would like like this:

Finally, take a strip of paper like you use to clean the tank and put one edge of it inside the edge of the paint on one side of the tank. Pull the paper to the edge of the tank and then up the side and out of the tank. That action will bring the paint right to the edge of the tank. Also, pull the paint to the edge of the other side of the tank. The point is to make sure that the paint covers the entire surface of the tank. If the paint pulls away or your newspaper strip wasn’t long enough just use another strip to make sure the paint is spread all over the tank surface.

That’s it, and it works! You can go forward from there dropping paint as you would normally. Another helpful tip is to use darker colors of paint when the tank is new and clean because it is easier to see. If your tank is dirty/darker color, then use a lighter paint. With experience  you will be able to see even white paint on a clean tank but it will probably take so time.

Looking at other people’s work can inspire you. I spend a lot of time looking to see if I can figure out how certain patterns were done or to discover new color combinations. You know they say copying is the sincerest form of flattery. Over time you will make changes and use your own color palate to make your creations yours alone.

Some international marblers to explore are:

Pernille Snedker Hansen (Denmark) Also see the YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ir2vkDJxBo

Karli Frigge (The Netherlands) Search her name and then look at the images

Renato Crepaldi (Brazil) https://www.Renato-crepaldi.com

And to move into another very different kind of marbling, Ebru or Turkish marbling (they use watercolor paint and their designs are very ritualized according to Regina and Dan St. John) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxUNM_diZy0

Enjoy!

When I first started marbling my answer was to find a color that seemed to consistently give me small drops on any given day and save it till last. That worked most of the time but gave me very little control over what would be the last color on my papers. Over time, I have learned how to better manage the laying down of the color.

The marblers major tool in managing aggression is the rule that, once you have the paint mixed (I suggest you use a quarter sized amount of paint with about 1.5 oz water), if you want your drops to spread more (i.e., be more aggressive) you add paint and if you want your drops to spread less you add water. Note that this is just the opposite of what your “common sense” would suggest; that’s and easy way to remember what to do.

But the marblers life is not that easy! There are other factors that must be considered:
The amount of aggression in the drops of any color are also effected by when you put them on the vat. In the first rounds of dropping colors, the drops spread out more, then as increasing amounts of paint are on the surface of the vat, the drops have less space to spread so they get a little smaller.
Another factor affecting spread/aggression is the nature of the pigment itself and how it compares to the pigments that it is touching on the surface of the vat. Sometimes if your last round of color is very aggressive, you can break up the color by dropping another color in the drops of those big drops.

So how do I juggle all this when I’m marbling? I try to see how each color is reacting on the size for that day by doing a couple of sheets. As I work, I weigh how the color behaves as one of the first rounds and also as one of the last rounds. Only then do I start adding water or paint. And I only add a little of either at any one time and test how the paint works before adding more.

While this sounds really complicated, pretty soon it becomes almost second nature. Also, if I want to use a color that is aggressive towards the end and get big drops, I then add other colors that I have already dropped inside the bigger drops to break up the color. In the picture with this post, the black paint was very aggressive because I added pigment and did not respond well to having more water added so I added drops of white, blue, and green inside those big black drops to break up the color (or lack thereof!).

Let me show you what it looks like in a combed pattern:

See how much of the white in the red rectangle is misshapened? That is new tank. You can also see it when the paint has been dropped but not combed because the edges of the drops are often misshapened with irregular “spotches” of clear tank.

Sometimes there is a lot of new tank and sometimes I don’t see any. The explanation I have been given is that the various chemicals – the alum, the carrageenan, and the paint — need to “marry,” that is, interact a little so they work well together. New tank occurs when those chemicals have not yet interacted together. However, this does not explain why sometimes “new tank” doesn’t seem to appear while at other times it does… Regardless of what the explanation is, it usually goes away after 2 or 3 sheets.

If your tank doesn’t go away, then I believe that there is something “polluting” the carrageenan long term.  It might have been in the container where you mixed it or in whatever you used to actually mix the carrageenan. In other words, some chemical from past uses of your equipment has mixed into the carrageenan and is causing the ongoing problem. This is why it is so important to keep your carrageenan mixing equipment safe from potential pollutants. The most obvious of these “potential pollutants” is soap! Soap is a surfactant that lowers surface tension between liquids. Surface tension is why the paint on the vat does not blend and we are able to make patterns in it. So, when washing your equipment never use soap! While this may seem like an extreme requirement (e.g., having special equipment for mixing carrageenan); most dedicated marblers are willing to do it because they want to control as many of the factors that can effect marbling as possible.

New tank in the first few sheets is, however, to be expected and cannot always be controlled – it is just something you need to work around.

Paint selection presents a multitude of uncertainties when you are starting out as a marbler: will these paints work for me? Can I be sure what colors I like? How do I know which white or black to pick? Buying paint is one of the more expensive components of becoming a marbler so making wise decisions is a good thing. With that in mind – and because my students have asked – I am writing this blog!

First, some disclaimers – I am only writing from my knowledge and experience with paint selection. That experience has been almost exclusively marbling with Golden Fluid Acrylics. I’m not schooled in color theory either – this is about what seems to work rather than what one “should” do.

Here is my advice about some section basics:

• I have been told that marblers should use one brand of paint because then you are not mixing a whole lot of different approaches to paint chemistries. That makes logical sense to me so I have simply accepted it.
• Choosing a white and black are one of the first challenges. I’d buy Carbon Black because that is the most black – Bone Black is really grey. Stay away from Zink White; it is too heavy and often sinks to the bottom of the tank. Titanium White has also been problematic for me so I buy Titan Buff to use as my white.
• Pyrrole Red is the best red for marbling that I have found. The other reds tend to come out pink on the paper. Purples are generally hard to use! I’m still experimenting with them.
• Don’t be put off by the mustard color of yellow oxide or yellow ochre, they usually make a much truer yellow on the paper when marbling.
• You are unlikely to be able to afford all the colors you want. And, Golden doesn’t make some – burgundy, for instance. Here are some of the mixed colors I’m currently using: Permanent Green Light + almost the same amount of black = nice dark green; Paynes Gray + Pyrrole Red + a drop of black = burgundy; vat orange + a little Van Dyke brown = burnt orange. Mix away!

This info is just to get your paint selection started. One of the fun things about marbling is the color combinations you come up with and developing your own pallet of colors. So, expect to need to experiment and start with new colors by buying the small (1 oz) bottles and mark when sales are likely to occur. Also, watch what colors other marblers use and ask what they are and even if you can borrow some for a sheet. This is one of the beauties of marbling in groups!!

• Chemistry – I see this mostly in things like how you can get “new tank” with the colors not forming smooth lines in the drops and patterns. It happens most often when the carrageenan is new and usually goes away. If you continue to get “new tank” it may be that the carrageenan is very old or the tank has been contaminated somehow. Another example of a chemical problem is managing each color’s aggression on the tank because the chemistry of different pigments effect the amount of spreading. Often this can be fixed by adding water to the paint mixture for less spread or pigment for more spread.
• Technique – How the marbler drops the paint, holds the combs, moves them, lays down the paint, etc. all effect the quality of the marbling. This is why practice and exposure to multiple marblers can really help because you will see different techniques or different aspects of the technique at different times. I remember how much it helped me to “retake” a class from my original teacher (Steve Pittelkow) after I had been marbling for a number of years. I saw things then that I didn’t take any note of when it was all new to me.
• Art – The colors you choose and how you array them is all about the art for me. It is always interesting to see what people see as beautiful and try to emulate. This is why marblers who have been working for some time can often recognize the work of other marblers by the color palate they favor. What you marble on and the patterns you use will also make your marbling distinctive.

So, when something is not going right for you, think of these components and try to determine which one (or one’s) might be the source of your problems. Like marbling, diagnosis of problems marbling is also an acquired skill and sometimes you are just having a bad day!

The problem looks like this (see the upper left portion of the picture):

instead of this:

In the problem picture above, see how what started as a bisection on the right side changed and the comb appears to have moved to mirror the first combing as it progresses to the left in the picture. That lack of consistent bisection means that patterns built on the problem combing will look like this (the problem can now be seen on the lower left side of the picture below.

The basic cause of this problem is the size in the vat shifts while you are doing the second bisected pass of the chevron. Using the half-inch comb it is hard to bisect! Here are some tips that have helped me succeed or at least better understand what is happening.

• On that final pass, place the comb so that any extra tines of the comb are all outside one side of the vat. This will give you some fudging room to move if the size shifts.
• Don’t touch the sides of the vat to anchor your last bisection. Putting your fingers on the sides of the vat is a good way to steady your hands most of the time. BUT, if you have a plastic vat your fingers can add pressure to the side of the vat and cause the size to shift. If you have a metal vat sometimes the sides are not super straight and that can cause the same kind of problem.
• Go slowly as you make that final pass! You do not want to cause the size to shift except right around the pin. Speed can cause waves.
• Practice is a major help to learning how to do this right!

A Trick: If all else fails, make a special set of combs. One on which the tines are 1 ¼ inches apart and one on which the tines are ¾ inches apart. You wouldn’t think that adding a ¼ inch would have such a positive effect!

Here are some basic guidelines:

• Keep the dropper just a couple of inches from the surface. That gives you more control of where the drops go.
• Focus on learning to squeeze the dropper head at a consistent pace and move the dropper over the vat at a consistent speed. This will allow you to get to that one drop at a time ideal and to have uniform color across the vat. This is not a natural ability for most of us (kind of like rubbing your stomach and patting your head) so don’t be surprised that you need to practice! Once you master this basic approach to applying paint, the paint application will go much faster. Also, you can vary how you place the color to achieve different effects that you want to experiment with or find more appealing.
• Remember that when you first apply color and there is no competition for surface space on the vat, the paint spreads quite a bit. But as you put more and more paint on the surface, it pushes the earlier drops around and they get condensed and easier to see.
• There is no need to take the “fried egg” approach to dropping the paints if you are going to pull a pattern with combs afterwards. I think people may take to doing that because they think it will help the combed pattern have more rings of color. You don’t need to do that! It is the job of the combs to create the rings. Every time a comb crosses the vat a set of rings is created. Some patterns made of just “fried egg” rings are quite lovely, FYI.
• When doing combed patterns I have found that dropping first light, then dark, then light, then dark colors will make the patterns have more definition.
• You put on color until the drops do not expand more than to the size of a 25 or 50 cent piece. If the color drops are much bigger your combed pattern will have places where the pattern is all one color and is really hard to see.

These guidelines are for your early marbling career. As you become more experienced you may find that you may prefer a different way of “throwing” paint on the paper but still you will find that these basics were worth developing because of the added control they give you.

That said I have learned to consider one factor that I wouldn’t have realized earlier in my marbling career: how soft and pliable is the paper? As I have watched other marblers and talked with them about the paper they use I have come to the conclusion that when you pick a type of paper you also pick the time you will apply alum. Here’s my thinking.

To get the paper down on the vat in a single, smooth motion you need soft pliable paper and it also needs to be flat. This is how you get patterns without “hitches” or other hesitation marks on them. The flatness can generally be assured by laying something relatively heavy that is flat across your papers while they are waiting to be marbled. The pliability of the paper can be achieved in two possible ways:

1. You can buy paper that is “soft” and retains its pliability even after aluming. That has been my answer for most of my “good” marbling and I find Hahnemuhle Ingres Paper works very well. That allows me to alum the paper in advance and start marbling without waiting to alum my paper and then for it to dry a bit.
2. The other option to achieve pliability is to alum just before you marble the paper. You have to let the alum dry some or it won’t do its magic so that lets you alum maybe 5-10 sheets at a time. Alum them, keep them flat, and when they are still moist marble with them; the chance for good patterns and no air bubbles is greatly improved. This allows me to use less expensive paper such as SAX 80lb paper when I’m experimenting with colors or patterns or just starting a marbling session.