A blast from the past

We decided to post a few techniques done 6 years ago in our first days. This was a great two-part post about Marbling from Kathy Molatch, a founding member/artist.

Here's the setup.  I worked in the white tub to the left, and Rosalita worked in the foil roasting pan toward the back.  At the bottom right is all the electrical tape that Dharma Trading Co. used to wrap the tops of the marbling paints for shipping...too bad I couldn't think of a good use for it, although it might make good resist lines when marbling.

This small container of carageenan was our test batch.  Everything seemed okay when we dropped green paint into it.

 The following 2 photos show fabrics (in this case, washed Kona cotton) which are colored rather than the white previously used.  I was a bit alarmed by the dried alum, then realized that it probably was the same on the white but we just couldn't see it.

True blue

Dark navy

Although a bit hard to see, this is the first drop of black paint in the upper right.  It dispersed rapidly.

Subsequent drops of black paint.

I added red, then metallic gold, then white and lastly some yellow.

 It turns out that, beautiful and alluring though they are, metallics weren't working well.  They tended to sink, then left a granular surface on the carageenan that affected later layers of paint.

Here I've used a wooden skewer to swirl the paints.  The metallic gold made the other colors have ragged edges, not the smooth swirling that I was looking for.

A new try.  You can see the paints from last time that sank to the bottom.

Red, yellow were added here, then a bit of spattering with white and some black dots laid into the yellow areas.

More red, then red dots laid into the red.  By this time, I realized that I didn't like the white.

Here I've started swirling, again with a single wooden skewer.

White is laid down first, with additional drops of white added to the centers.

Yellow is dropped between the white areas.

Purple added to the white.