Lessons
Lesson Info
Manipulating the Ink with Paper Tabs
The next thing I want to do is I want to show you another way. Um, that you can deal with the inks versus dropping it in with the paint brush. And with each of the little kits are these little floating paper tabs? Does everyone have those at their tables? Okay, so these come with assuming a gashi inks you simply their perforated you punch them out um and let's go on ahead and punch out. I don't know about three of them, and what we're going to do is the's will float on the surface of the water so just gently going to drop it on the surface there. And this is what these allow us to dio these allow us to take our drink bottles and drop a drop or two of the ink onto the surface. If we were to do this directly onto the surface of the water, it would immediately sink underneath the water and very little little of it would remain floating. But what thes tabs do is they break the fall of the ink, they give it sort of a cushion and they allow it to spread out so let's, give it a try and see ho...
w they look. You kind of see it propelled my tabs right across the surface there, but while there still is a good amount, you look at that I am dropping it right on top of the taps on by I am learning that if you do it closest to the edge, it will you'll get more coverage on the surface sometimes if you're if you're a good aim and you're getting it right in the middle of those tabs, they might just puddle up and stay there for a little bit, so if you can kind of came in a little bit towards the edge you'll get more on the surface now you can see in this particular bath some of these dark areas that's where some of the did sink down below the surface of the water not to be concerned again, those air not going to affect our final design and anyway, now I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to contrast this say with some yellow inc what I do want to do is try and get one of my little paper tabs on going toe screwed it over towards the center of my water bath and I just did that with the edge of one of my paint brushes and again, you kind of want to get pretty down close on top here there we go and kind of see it creates for that beautiful bubble design and phyllis, you were asking earlier about using multiple in colors at the same time this is a really great way to do it because you've got these floating tabs and you don't have to worry about a different brush reach paint color you're just going to keep applying them using these floating tabs to sort of break their fall so I'm going to do a few more of these and it is just sort of this like lovely organic process the way they kind of dance around the surface of the water um I am going to push one of my tabs again out towards the center of my water bath and I'm going to add one more color tropper two a cream all rights yeah it won't the purpose of the tab really is just to break the fall of that ink drop now you can still see in my water bath aa lot of those dark areas there that is ink that has sunk below the surface and a fair amount has done that in this instance and that is going to happen more with this method where we're using the tabs versus the brushes but in the interim you can certainly feel free to start playing around with the ink that you've just dropped onto the surface be it with using the straw to blow air lightly onto the surface of the water or just taking the handle end of your paintbrush and dragging it across in any sort of pattern information you'd like and for this I'm just kind of kind of lightly go back and forth and what's interesting is you'll see when you dragged from an area on the surface of the water that has no ink into an area that is covered with ink ah little trail of no ink will follow your paintbrush if that makes sense it's a little negative space will chase your paintbrush across which can create some really interesting designs and patterns I am going to gently take thes and I'm just gonna grab my little floaty tab if it lets me there we go and set it off to the side. The reason I am doing this before I pull the paper is because otherwise I could end up with the tabs acting as resists and end up with some little dots which could be an interesting technique and certainly would be something fun to play around with but at least for the purpose of this one I'd like to see what it looks like without them. So once you've gotten to the point where you're happy with your design, go ahead and take your piece of paper and again gently lay it down over the surface to capture your marbling design allow it to sit for just three to five seconds four five and then lifted by the corners that's great and you can see with that heavier concentration of ink because we were dropping it right from the bottle the colors tend to be a little bit more vivid and dense I'm going to grab another paper towel and just sort of pat off some of that access and you can see with most of ours here in the studios as as they've only been sitting out on the surface of our work spaces for a few minutes, they're already starting to kind of curl up around the edges and the paper is warping as it dried but again, a zay said before that's not really something to be concerned about it so it can be ironed out after it is fully dry or it can be placed between some pieces of paper towel and stuck in the interior of a book. So now that we have done that pass, most of us, I think, have a lot of ink to clear out of our baths, and I might also add that you can try multiple passes from one design. So say, for example, I just pulled this lovely orange, yellow and blue design it still looks like there's a fair amount of ink on the surface of my water just by way of experiment let's, put down another sheet and see how much is captured. Pull that up off the surface and you can see it's incredibly faint but it's really lovely um and that's, so funny I almost like that second pull better than the first one look how subtle those colors are beautiful marbling effect I love that I think I like the second one better to rights so again I'm just gonna take a clean paper towel and just do a little padding across the surface now we've done a few designs at this point and you know our work surfaces air getting a little cluttered so I am going to just put some pieces of paper towel between the marbling sheets and create a little pile up here just by way of kind of uh controlling organization on the workspace the second passed more look like water color than usually it's a much more subtle tone to it which I just think is lovely really, really pretty okay, so once you have done that let's go ahead and, um clean up our water bass catherine you actually doing a second pass with same print? I love that idea. I'm curious how that turned out does it make it feel more dense? It looks really full. I love that. How many colors did you do? Multiple passes. Well one this is a ok says the actually need to walk over and see these because these look pretty great was the first poll on that second hole? Okay, I think I like the second one. Yeah, if we can just show this you can see this was the first polls which was really dense and much more vivid this second is almost pastel like what I love is the way that the way that the black has ended up it's almost a light charcoal color which is really pretty understanding normal depth, which is awesome, you know that's what I thought you did and that's what I wanted to see if you don't know what your teeny tiny think ok, you know hold this up so you can see it so what cathy did as she did one initial past and how rachel had done two separate sheets of paper she actually took the same sheet and placed it that down and so you've got this beautiful sort of like over shadowing in a different direction I think that's really lovely I love that ok cool put discovery my friends this is good all right? Yes. And again so settle on like like watercolor this's again with phyllis is this was the first pass this was second pass and it's just really this one is it's it's got a little areas that are almost like muddy or smoky and this one almost came out cleaner which I think is really fascinating so beautiful that really spoke sites of paper that's an excellent idea and I especially think if you were to use let me just hold up matalin's as well this is the first path in a second pass it is well being was was being suggested. If you were to do this on either side of the paper, there are plenty of applications that you could use that for. If you were to use this for stationary or making your own envelopes, I think it would be completely charming. Toe. Have that marbling pattern on either side of your paper on really add something special.
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Ratings and Reviews
Deborah Willis
Instructor is very knowledgeable. Love that he has a very soothing voice. I LOVE his teaching style-he is very encouraging of his students to experiment, and I love that he comments on their creations during the session causing you to see elements of their creations that you might have otherwise missed.