My favorite Marbling tools

This last week was supposed to have me back in the studio doing some marbling inspired by one of the earth from space photos from NASA.  Alas, I was unable to sleep through the night at all this week so I was only able to get some marbling prep done.  So, here's my current state:  marbling gel made, fabric treated, cut and pressed, ready to go, and colors selected.  I'm hoping some of you are looking at that picture and asking what's that thing? cuz that's what I'm going to talk about: my favorite marbling tools.

I learned to marble from books and an artist friend who took a weekend workshop.  I didn't have a ready source of tools and I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it so I decided to diy most of the things I needed.  This meant re-purposing plastic pans and shoe boxes for marbling trays.  The rakes used to create tight patterns come in different sizes for different trays so I also needed to make my own of those.  In general, the only thing here that's recognizable as a commercially available marbling tool is the pile of black whisks which my artist friend gave me.  Everything else was improv.

Going left to right, we start with a cardboard tube which I use to wrap the fabric around so I can unroll it on top of the marbling gel after I apply the paint with the whisks and manipulate it.  Using the tube as a roller makes fabric much easier to marble and allows me precise placement without much worry about errors at all.  To the right of the tube are all the paints I've selected for this palette.  I spent one summer trying out different paints I had and buying some samples of new ones for colors that my current paints didn't do well.  (Once applied to the marbling gel, the paints spreads quite a bit.  In particular, all the reds I had turned pink because the pigment was in too thin a layer.  One of many reasons why starting marbling is a steep learning curve.)  

Now we get to the real tools.  I made a few rakes/combs to fit the size of the trays I had available.  My first attempts used foamcore as the handle and various sizes of pins for the comb part.  Foamcore doesn't stand up well to wet so I used some trimmings from sheets of honeycomb plastic.  And I ended up using T-pins because they worked so well being inserted into the white plastic strip.  Waterproof, not going to shift around and easy to adjust the spacing if needed.  These turned out to be my second favorite tools. 

I've already mentioned the black whisks which are used to apply the paint to the gel surface.  I also use them to do the marbling strokes by flipping them over and using the solid end as a one pin comb.  This is easier than making really tiny rakes to use with small trays.  And my favorite tool is last.  The ceramic chopstick rests that I repurposed because the glossy glaze means the acrylic paint can be easily scraped off.  

So there we are.  I made 2 gallons of gel, have my 11x14 tray set up and all my paints and tools ready to go.  Monday I start throwing paint around.