Creative Links of the Week: Marbling!

From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Good morning, friends! It won't come as a surprise to you that I think creativity is important. Really, really important. So in the interest of encouraging as many of you as possible to live creatively and turn your lives into the works of art they're meant to be, I decided to reserve this space every Friday to share some articles, images, and videos to get your creative juices flowing.

Last week we dove headfirst into the art of traditional paper marbling! Marbling is a great project to attempt with children--or great for you if you like art that is simultaneously challenging and quickly rewarding. Even if you mess up, the end result is still lovely! If I can, I'll update this post with pictures of our work...but taking pictures is not yet one of my creative skills. In the meantime, enjoy these links:

This incredible artist is creating Ebru, a Turkish form of marbling in which pictures (as opposed to the beautiful abstract designs we're used to seeing in books' endpapers) are formed by manipulating the paint on the "size"(thickened water).

Here's where we bought our supplies, if you'd like to jump in to the traditional method (that is, preparing your paper with a mordant, creating size by thickening water with carrageenan, and dripping paint onto the size before swirling and raking). Compared to a lot of art projects, this one had a fairly small initial investment of about $50.

If you'd like to try your hand at marbling without the initial investment in materials, you can have fun with what might be lying around your house already and marble with shaving cream and food coloring. Especially for younger children, this can be a great way to introduce the general concepts behind marbling. Make it a science lesson, too, and discuss viscosity and color mixing.

Have fun, and go make something!