Experience and Experiment

I'm starting to rearrange my studio for my "Experience the Tank" class I'm teaching this weekend. I'm REALLY excited about it since the class is designed to give people the chance to play in the tank and experience the wonders of marbling without significant time investment. Most marbling classes are at least two full days...a must for anyone even slightly serious about picking up the art form. But sometimes you just want a little taste before diving in and that's what my class is about. Participants will learn how to make four basic patterns and another three or four "fancy" ones in the three-hour class. There will be a variety of paper colors and weights to play with too. And, as always in my studio, getting messy and experimenting will be strongly encouraged. And speaking of experimenting, here are some shots of pieces that came from my time in the studio last week.

Shot

Above: I love this one because it looks like someone shot at it and the white spots are bullet holes that look into the next room. It's wickedly wild.

QuadOvermarble

Above: This is a quad-overmarble. Yep, I overmarbled four times. I wanted to see what kind of texture you could get before (and if) things got muddled. I also wanted to see if there was a significant difference between overmarbling two, three and four times. Turns out there is! I was very conscious of colors and color placement to ensure every layer was recognizable. In the end, I am extremely pleased with this piece. It was work to get it here (lots of planning and thinking things through) but worth it.

Above: I wanted to see if I could get my rings to look like ripples. I first tried doing a Spanish moire to the ring design on the bath but that didn't work out so well. It just looked like crooked, broken rings. So then I did a Spanish moire stone overmable on top of the rings and this is the result. Much better, but still not as impressive as I thought it would be.

A surprise rain descended upon us here in LA last night and an impending rain storm is supposed to hit Wednesday into Thursday, making the conditions for marbling excellent this week. So off to the studio I am...