HOW-TO: marble

[wouter1981]

Well some people asked me how I did my marble caterham. The result of the tutorial isn't as nice as my caterham, because I rushed it a bit more and didn't use a lot of different layers. So here it goes. BTW English isn't my first language. ;-)

First some "toughts":

a) Search for pictures of the marble you try to replicate and study it carefully. If possible try to get a piece of real marble.

b) Marble is semi-translucant. You'll need to add a lot of semi transparant layers over each others. So you HAVE to thin you're paints down a lot.

c) Marble consist of all kinds of different rocks that has been compressed together under high presure. Remeber this! The veins are the places where one rock collides with another, so only draw veins where 2 different colors, or "shades" come together.

d) the veins can split, come together, widen,... but they can never cross another vein.

e) this tutorial is for black/green marble, but the same "theorie" counts for different colours, altough there isn't an "exact" way to replicate marble.


f) Making marble isn't a science. You'll have to "play" with the paints to get a result you like. But if you used thin and transparent paints, you can keep playing with it.

g) imho, enemals are by far the best paints for this work.
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1

paint you're surface in an even colour. For obvious resons I paint it black.



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2

I splatered some thinned dark green on the entire surface. With a toothbursh, an old stif paintbrush,.. it doesn't matter. As long it's verry thin and irregular. Let it dry at least a day.



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3

With a brush (not to small, I used a n°1) you paint some "blobs" of middel green and just "play" with until you have some interresting patern. Don't worry of it still doesn't look like marble. Don't over do it. Most marble have rather big spots with a rather uniform color. Just keeping looking to you're example.
Let it dry.



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4

Carefully repate step 3 a number of times, layering one coat of paint over the other. It's recommended with each layer, you add a little white. Be verry carefully or the green wil become TO bright. There is no real way to tell when you're finished. Again, don't go crazy. If you'll make the structure of the marble really complicated, you'll have a really hard time to make it look realistic.



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5

Veining, the hardest part of the marble making. First you'll need a verry fine brush (0/5) and some thinned white paint.
When you look at youre strangely formed green and black surface, you'll notice some parts are black, others dark green, others light green. The veins are positioned on the transistions between 2 colours. Don't draw a vein trough an even colored section. The vein itself doesn't consist of a singel, undived white line. It's made of several, short lines, dots, blobs,... that create the illusion it's a continuous line.
Don't make the veins criss-cross around the surface. Notice how my veins all have "about" the same direction. Keep in mind, it's a naturaly formed thing, so every direction, coloration, thickness,... is unique.



After this step was dry, i coated the entire surface with a verry thin dark green to "blend" the veins and the different colours with each other.


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6

When everyhin is dry, you take you're fine brush and white paint (thinned again) and you "accent" some parts of the veins. Again, less is more. If everything goes wright, you should have something like this:



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7

last step: Clearcoat. I clearcoated with revell enamels. Because everything is hand painted (I only used my airbrush for the black underground and the varnish) the surface is rather bumpy and you'll need to polish it a lot. just keep spraying a lot of thin coats. And polish until you're arm drops of. When finished it should look like this:

http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbul...d.php?t=654606

Happy marbling!

[bigfrit]

Interesting technique;
How did you find out about it? Just splashed some paint around and thought ; hey, it's marble!

Oli

[klutz_100]

Thanks for sharing that
I've been waiting patiently

Originally Posted by bigfrit

Interesting technique;
How did you find out about it? Just splashed some paint around ..

He used his marbles, dummy!

[bigfrit]

Originally Posted by klutz_100

He used his marbles, dummy!

I don't like this kind of offensive comment, klutz!



And yeah, i was wondering about the marbles too, it looks pretty slick, but I can't really think of a good implementation to put it on, you did what a perfectly sane crazy person would do, put it on a lightweight roadster...

[wouter1981]

Originally Posted by bigfrit

Interesting technique;
How did you find out about it? Just splashed some paint around and thought ; hey, it's marble!

Oli

I know a person who does indoor painting, and his speciality is Faux-marble. Real-life fake marble. And he tought me some beginnings.