Marbling 101 - The basics

Okay, to kick things off I'd like to state the obvious:  Marble looks pretty!  The problem is it can be a huge pain in the butt to paint.  So I'd like to point out a few things about marble that a lot of people don't realize:  it is manageable.  Don't worry!  Today we are going to tackle the beast!  I'm going to take you through the steps I used to build the marble textures of the plinth for the Garden of Shadows project (See other entry for complete project :D).  I'm going to show you an easy 4 colour progression here.  


  So step 1:  Decide what colour you want your marble to be.  In the case of our project the army this plinth is complimenting has a colour scheme of black and a rich purple.  So to add colour to this centerpiece I opted to do the plinth (and shrine atop) in a nice deep violet marble.




Materials used:

•  A good pointy brush  (I used a Citadel Standard Brush & a Citadel Basecoat Brush for this)
• Primer (here in I used Chaos Black Spray)
• 4 paint colours (black/white, and a dark and light variety of your chosen colour)   I used:
• Chaos Black
• Liche Purple (dark purple)
• Hormagaunt Purple  (Light purple)
• Skull White 
• A good clear gloss acrylic medium.  I used Gloss Varnish
• Water
• A clean palate of some sort (I tend to use tin foil but there are many good palates out and available)
• Paper towel to dry your brush off on!
• A visual reference of what you want your marble to imitate.  The internet is great for sources.  There is no better supplier than nature for visual references of rock!

  That being said I will try to provide links to the materials I use for ease and use.  There are many high quality paints, brushes, tools, etc. out there. Sadly not all of them are created alike.  We will tackle that in another thread.  But this is what I used so you know and you are welcome to use whatever you are comfortable with!


Step 1: Priming & Base Coating

  The first part of any project is to make sure your surface is clean and evenly primed.  By evenly primed I DO NOT mean heavily doused in primer so it will never have hopes of seeing the light of day.  A light even coat of primer is enough.  It only needs to hold the paint on the model, folks.  it isn't meant to be used AS paint :)  So for those of you whom need a guide, hold the can after well shaken, about 12-15" away and make it sund like an irritating person trying to get your attention.  *psst* *psst*  *psst*  Short bursts.  That's all.

  After that we apply the first coat of paint.  I am doing a dark marble so we used a dark primer and a dark base.  In this case both black.

  So now we'll prep the black paint** on the palette and apply to all sides to cover up the primer.  My lil cube went from being matte black to... well matte black.  Not much progress but that'll change.

    **When mixing your paint, please remember that it is in a concentrated state.  You want to follow all the guidelines in the article concerning paint prep.  I hope to have that up tomorrow.




Step 2: Establishing Tone & Texture

  To get ideas for ideas for what you want yours to look like just type MARBLE in your google search and click images.   So the trick to this marble technique is to remember that your "stripes" (regardless of light or dark coloured marble) should be wide and get skinnier as you go.  
 
  Here we're going to use the darker Liche purple because we want to make a even gradation of colour here.  We're not going to be stingy about the width of the lines.  This is going to help provide depth and tone to our marble to give it a strong, rich violet colour.

I find to get a very natural 'organic' feel to them hold your brush towards the back so your hand is far removed from the model.  Shaky is good.  Again don't over water your paint.  you want it smooth and fluid, not runny.

Marble gets it's veins by having deposits of other minerals or fractures that appear in the rock, so I made sure to have a lot of good long lines that wrap laterally around the plinth.  the top I left bear because it's going to have a statue glues to the top of it and no one will see that part.  except you guys... right now.  >.>  oh well.

Step 3: It's starting to look like something!

  So we move to the light purple herein represented by the foundation paint, hormagaunt purple.  Just because it's a foundation colour does not mean it HAS to go on the bottom.  it just means it excels at giving good coverage.  ow we want to define these veins of colour.  I switched up to the citadel standard brush, applied a modest amount of paint to it, and rolled the end so it still has a rather fine point on it.

  Using the same method of holding the brush at the end  we are going to apply only a little amount of pressure to the brush to get a nice medium weight line.  POINTY BRUSHES AT THIS STAGE ARE KEY!  To help accentuate the natural movement of the lines try practicing with rolling the brush back and forth in your fingers while you make your shaky little network of lines!

**remember:  the lines do not have to follow the dark purple exactly.  the majority of them do, but it's not the rule.  Here are 2 different views of the side of the plinth.  On the left you can see a good relation of size and ratio.  on the right, that's how far you need to push down with the brush.  That is to say not very much.  The less of the tip of the brush you use, the finer of a line you get.

Step 4: ..Looks Suspiciously like Step 3

  We're going to repeat step 3 again but with MUCH finer lines and using your lightest colour, here being skull white.  In some areas I've had a couple lines run parallel overlapping in a few areas.  For a clean look I had most of mine trail 'off the canvas' so I didn't have to worry about the piece looking like a series of short dashed likes.  In other places I chose a few of the lines to taper off.  This can be done by slowly lifting the rush up as you drag your line until it is off the model.  Now we're almost done!  You'll notice it will look a bit flat and dull.  Your lighter colour lines and your white lines look chalky and won't visually fit together.  it still isn't meshing.  I know.  we're not finished.

Step 5: Glossing - The Grand Finale!

  So after your veins of lightening have dried and you're done admiring your handy work... it's okay... I'll wait.  Excellent!  We are going to take our 'Ardcoat gloss varnish (which is a clear, non-pigmented acrylic glaze) and apply a nice even coat to all the surfaces.  The key to getting a smooth gloss coat is to remember that it, too, is a very viscous thing.  You can add just a little hint of water to it in order to get i to move about fluidly. 


Why this part?  for one polished marble is shiny!  Also the gloss coat helps reflect light back through all the layers below it making them brighter and MUCH more vibrant.  NOW that first layer of liche purple will really have some depth and backbone to it and gracefully fade up to the lighter colours!


Totally manageable!!!

 

Other references:
  Here's some of the examples where 4 and 3 step marbling were emplyed with a light coloured marble.   The progression being [Skull White] -> [Fortress Grey] -> [Codex Grey] -> [Chaos Black]