Art

What did you do on the weekend? I know a few of you went to Booktown in Clunes, because I saw/heard you were there. I ended up going three times, scouring the stalls for arts references, children’s picture story books and gardening books. I ended up with a goodly bundle of resources, but also had the pleasure of doing some paper marbling, meeting a children’s book illustrator – Ann James and also one half of a two person team who run an excellent blog on children’s books weheartbooks.com. Katie (from weheartbooks) and I met up in a couple of places over boxes of childrens books, and we exchanged info on the joys of small people (son and in my case grandson) and of picture books. That’s one of the great joys of going to events like these – you never know who you might meet up with and where it might take you.

My encounter with marbling was my first since my daughter was in primary, and the lusciousness of the metallic inks, and the ease and joy of making marbled papers was a wonderful treat. This workshop by Robert McLaren and another on paper-making by Rosalind Lawson from the Arts Academy segued nicely with the theme and gave the hands-on types something to distract them from reading hundreds of book spines.

What I didn’t know at the time was some of the history of paper marbelling. A video search turned up this exquisite video of traditional Turkish marbling, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Looking for some books, sites or student examples to add to this blog I came across Adelles blog where she talks about her adventures as an arts educator – including her foray into marbling. Adelle’s reply (see below) inquiring about the consistency of the water in the video’s,  led me to an Artlex entry on marbling with the following link which gives some clear directions for working with marbling fabrics.

Here are some photos I took on the day.

Discussing marbling in today’s class, a student mentioned she had done something similar with a class on rounds, but using straws to blow the ink around…