CREATIVE
Claire Gillo tries out a fun photography project that combines photography with the art of marbling and explains how to do it in just a few simple steps
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USE YOUR BONUS TIPS CARDS
This project features in this month’s bonus tips cards. For a handy guide to capturing creative photos like this, keep your tips cards in your camera bag.
Marbling has been around for many years, and we see it in lots of different places – from pillars on old buildings to artworks, wrapping paper, book covers and even tiled surfaces in the home. There are many different ways you can marble and the fun and unique appeal of marbling is that no two effects are ever going to be the same.
The marbling technique we utilised in this tutorial uses a water solution and coloured paint. We bought a marbling magic kit, which can be purchased online for around £20/$24 – alternatively, you can improvise with household products including oil-based paints, food colouring, milk and even shaving foam. With our marbling kit, we were also able to lift and record our final marbled images onto paper; however, we opted to shoot the effect while it was still in the tray. We chose to do this so that we could shoot a sequence of images but we also liked the 3D appeal of the paint floating on the surface of the liquid.
Finally, as with any paint-based project, things can get a little messy. So make sure you have some kitchen roll to hand, and you may also want to put down a protective cloth before you begin.
For more ideas and tips, watch this video: www.bit.ly/dcm275marbling
Top tip – think about colours
To ensure that your marbling works wonders, think about the colours you are using and how they are going to blend together. For example, a warm and bright colour such as yellow will provide a good contrast when paired with a cooler, darker colour such as purple. Again, blue and orange will work well together, or green and red are also complementary colours.
You can introduce more than two colours if you want, but bear in mind that sometimes less is more and it’s easy to go one step too far and have to start all over again! That is part of the experimental process, though, so embrace some failure along the way to discover what works best for you.
1 Get started
Following the instructions in our marbling kit, we made a solution around six hours in advance, mixing together 250ml of water with a spr
