Cover Image: The Art of Paint Marbling

The Art of Paint Marbling

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Member Reviews

This is a fun and vibrant book with lots of ideas for paint marbling. The author gives step by step directions and then offers a huge range of ways to make paint effects like pouring in stripes and then running something through them to make patterns. These felt very similar and I found the colors and overall effects kind of meh but if you want lots of variations for stripe effects this is great. She also shows the effects of doing paint marbling over other art pieces, though they seemed out of my skill level. I generally look at arts and crafts books as a mother, since I do projects with my kids (at home and grown) and I know so many other moms who do these kinds of crafts with their kids. As such, I'm always hoping for a kid version or at least information about how to do it with kids. This doesn't provide that and doesn't really say if it's appropriate for children or not.

It also doesn't go into any safety concerns (these projects often involve materials that are either dangerous to inhale or to have skin contact with). The photos all show people doing this outside but I don't know if that's just because the author's workshops take place outside or if you need good ventilation. She also doesn't talk about environmental impacts of the materials and I don't know enough about them to know if they're a sustainable kind of materials or not (some obviously are, but I would really prefer if all art books spelled out exactly which are and which aren't, and provided more information). These are things that always matter to me as an artist, a mom and someone who cares about our environment. That's one reason I don't do resin art even though it's so popular and beautiful -- it's terrible for the environment and bad for your health to be around it. If that's not the case with any of these materials, that would be great to put in the book too. Either way, that information would be very helpful for many.

Our family has recently purchased a 120 year-old church near our home that we've converted into a community arts center and stocked with all kinds of art supplies, instruments, yarn, sewing machines, fabric, costumes, books and related arts materials. This is a book I'd certainly consider for art inspiration and workshops once we're open.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

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Free book for review from Netgalley! ~. Woah I wish I had had this book back during printmaking class when I was trying out marbling from online tutorials and interlibrary loan copies that weren’t nearly as thorough as this book. I got some of the steps right, but I missed out on so many things and this book would have answered ALL OF MY QUESTIONS.

Many people treat marbling like this great big secret art and will give you some of the basics... but not all the nitty gritty details to actually make good prints. Speaking as an artist and hobby bookbinder that kind of approach is very annoying— but this artist gives all the details and I am here for it!!

Needless to say once I have the space and materials I will try the process again—and I will definitely be using this book as a primary source of information. I feel like next time I might actually be successful.

Beautiful photos. Tools and equipment explained. Step by step guides. Projects to make w/ marbling at the end. Troubleshooting help. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

If you’re at all interested in marbling, I highly recommend this book.

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