The Book of Drawings. Marbling

To attach the back page to the book cover I needed some paper inlays. These are often decorated in most books by using printed patterns or coloured paper. I wanted to colour my inlays by hand using a technique called marbling. Marbling was used in a lot of older books as it’s simple to create and has an interesting effect. I have wanted to do this for a long time and I think it will fit well with the rest of the theme of my book. To make marbled paper I need oil paints, turpentine, foil trays, mixing sticks and cartridge paper.  

The correct way to create marbling is to first fill a try with water. The oil paints need to be diluted to the consistency of ink using the turpentine. The oil is then poured onto the water in the tray and mixed up using a stick. Quickly a piece of paper is placed on the water to pick up the pigment.

I did a practice run but did a few things wrong. I miss understood the process and used linseed oil instead of turpentine. This cased problems because I couldn’t make the oil paints thin enough to float effectively. The second thing I did wrong was to use water colour paper to pick up the pigment. This made the pigment soak into the paper and not sit on it, which was the effect I wanted.

For the second attempt I corrected this mistakes and tried again. I used a limited colour palette of black, blue and green as it fits in with the rest of the book. This time the marbled effect came out a lot better than the first time. I did this twice so that I had a sheet for the back and the front.