THE TOOLS
MATERIALS:
- Neon Jazz Gloss, I found the best price (here)
- Paint Palette
- Watercup
- Pallete knife (or a toothpick or chopstick)
- Paintbrush
- Cardstock or thick art paper
- 8×10 Frame, Optional
- Washi Tape or painters tape (optional and it gives a clean edge to work with) NOT PICTURED
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THEME: Marbling Paint
ART LINGO: Abstract Paint Strokes + Art of Marbling
APPROX TIME: 30min
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: ANY AGE
Why Hello there school year, a time of hustling and homework, new classrooms and old friends! We love the start of the school year but it can be BUSY!!! Here is a super fun and easy after school art project that is sure to bring some WOW to your walls!
Oh the Art of Marbling! I love traditional marbling where you float the marbled inks ontop of a thickner and watch the colors flow and ooze into each others. Marbling to me is meditation. It is the thing I do when I need to process or think or just turn my brain off! Besides ceramics, it is my all time favorite medium! I am obsessed! I am always trying to come up with a fun way to marble with my younger students that doesn’t take all the set up or time that traditional marbling asks for and I found the perfect solution with these Jazz Gloss Paints! I have been using Jazz gloss for years in my classes, its such a fun paint: a mix between a tempera and an acrylic it dries thick and shiny…..so fun for those pieces you need to add a little magic too like swirling marbling goodness!!! I asked my two year old daughter to join me in this project (that is literally how easy it is) I love how her painting came out!!!!!
You ready to get to it?? COME ON AND SCROLL DOWN WITH ME)
STEPS
Step 1:
Grab some washi tape or painters tape and create a border, my frame I used was an 8×10 so I made my border to be about 6”x8”
Put a dollop of paint in your palette, I always love to add some white to my colors, it tones them down in just the best way (See photo 1)
Step 2:
Grab your brush and begin to HAVE FUN! There is literally no rules here..just play. Pick a color and start painting your paper inside the taped border. You don’t even need to wash your brush, if you are anything like my two year old, you just grab a color then grab another and voila! You have invented a new color (See photo 2 & 3). Keep going until you fill in the whole taped off area and your paint is looking nice and thick.
Step 3:
If you have some paint left over, dump it onto your paper…Yes really!!! Just turn it upside down and let the paint drip all over your piece in the taped area. Don’t worry if some of your abstract painting gets covered, we will find those colors again! Have fun with this, I even went ahead and added some more white drips to certain areas to give me some blank spaces to work with. (see photo 4). Your paint should now be oozing into each other and feel nice and thick!!
Step 4:
Take your palette knife or toothpick/chopstick or even a literal stick and start ‘pulling’ the paint back and forth in your piece. You don’t want to rush this magical step. Keep going back and forth and swirling your paint into the next color, marbling the colors ontop of one another. I like to go back and forth and top to bottom to create some beautiful marbled feather details (see photo 5).
If you don’t like what is happening, drip a little more paint and swirl that into the mix. The only thing you want to watch out for is mixing it too much or with too thick a tool (like a paintbrush). That will cause your colors to get muddied and will defeat the purpose of the marbled swirling and paint pulling. (See Photos 5&6)
Step 5:
Once you get to a good place with your piece, let it dry (And I mean let it DRY….like for 24 hours depending how thick the paint is.) Once dry, you can remove the washi tape and place your beautiful piece in a frame! This is going in my daughters room on her art wall, I love how it came out!
THat’s it for now. An easy take on marbling that is half the effort and all the fun! I love that you could do this project in less then 30 minutes because let’s be honest, with the start of the school year who has time for anything more!
That’s it for now! It’s going to be a magical fall!!!!!! Stay creative, friends!!!
xx Mrs. K!
