Creating a Feather Marbling Effect on Pottery

Video Transcript

"So in this clip I'd like to show you how to do what's called feather marbling. So feather marbling is a very messy technique. So what we're going to do, and normally you would try this over a sink, but today I just sort of put out some paper towels for myself so I don't smear my table with paint. So the whole thing with feather marbling is basically taking wet paint, taking two colors, having it wet, sort of drenching your piece and actually shaking the piece into its marbling. So it's playing with the movement of the paint itself. So what you normally do is take about 2 different colors, although you can use more, and what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to be drizzling the paint onto whatever you wanted to marble. And then picking it up and actually shaking it and moving it. So let's get started. So what we're going to do is I'm going to take a white and a blue. That's what I've chosen to marble with today. And I'm literally going to pour the paint in no particular order onto my tile. And then go right ahead with my 2nd color and sort of try to fill in areas that I missed. So now comes the messy part. So now we have a load of paint on our piece and all I'm going to do is I'm going to start to tip it and run it and shake it. And then we're going to end up getting some really neat marbling. And if you've got to much color, like I think I have a little too much blue and I'd love to throw a little bit more white in there. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to add a little bit more white to the top and then just shake the piece down and then you'll sort of get all these nice little drifts. And you can sort of play with the drifts and rock it back and forth. And go back and add some more if you want to create some new sort of shapes. And then you sort of find little drifts and little marbling that you like. And then you can sort of leave it whenever you want. Another thing you can do when you're feather marbling is actually taking a pin and sort of drawing into, just like food artists do. All I'm going to do is I'm going to work with these swirls a little bit more. Creating more defined shapes. And this does create really neat texture. And this will actually keep during the firing. A lot of people ask me when they're doing feather marbling, if it will actually stay because some paints do change while they're being fired. But this does hold up remarkably well. So all I'm doing is just almost like a little fire works sort of design here. And then I'm just going to pull the other way. And that's how we feather marble."