Marbling With Watercolours

Ancient method of decorating paper.

Marbling with watercolours.

Marbled watercolor and oil painting with kids materials. Oil and water don t mix together so it is intriguing to see what happens when we mix them with watercolors. Historically all water based marbling was accomplished with watercolor or gouache paints formulated from natural pigments and binders. There are other creative ways to make beautiful pictures which the younger crowd is particularly impressed with.

You simply press a piece of paper into shaving cream swirled with liquid watercolours and the colours and patterns are transferred to the paper making it look marbleized. Use watercolors to create a marbled background effect. Read more below to see how it went and our tips and tricks for keeping this colorful art activity fun with minimal mess yes this can get messy. Easy diy paper marbling at home materials.

The process is fascinating and really easy. One of the designs we made was marbling using shaving cream. I used fabriano watercolor paper 90lb weight heres a photo from the internet of what it looks like when you do it. Watercolor paint watercolor paper we cut these sheets in half pipettes or droppers oil we used vegetable oil you ll also need a tray to contain spills plastic cups butcher paper or cloth to lay your paintings on and paper towels.

Examples do exist of cloth marbled with watercolor paints notably the cover of charles woolnaugh s 1853 book the art of marbling. You can control the colors and how erratic you want the swirls and its amazing to then paint on top of or to use for mounting photos and such. The colors of the historical natural palette are subtle but pleasing. Generally when the activity of painting comes to mind we think of paintbrushes.

Today i ll show you how to make marbled paper with shaving cream and liquid watercolours.