Ebru Art

Have you heard of Ebru Art before? Well, I didn’t know this kind of art ever existed and I was so impressed when I saw this guy creating this beautiful painting on water and then transfer them onto a piece of paper. Yes… that’s right… painting on water. Me and my other half said that this is truly a water painting… So impressed by this we decided to stick around and talked to the guy. He told us that he was invited to do this art demonstration for 3 days as part of Mother’s Day celebration at the Avenues Kuwait (This was a couple of weeks back).

Artist demonstrating Ebru Art in Avenues Mall

Ebru is another name for Paper Marbling and it is one of the oldest Turkish arts. Paper Marbling is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing insoluble paint over dense water and then carefully transferred to an absorbent surface, such as paper or fabric.

Ebru Art - Flower and birds

If you look at the photo above, you can see that the background of the painting has some sort of marble effect. This can be obtained by dabbing your desired colour of paint in the water so that it creates blobs of paint on the top of the water and then used the other end of the brush to drag through the water and create the marbling effect. Well… same technique used to create marble effect on your cake really! Drawings or patterns can now be added onto this background. Flowers, birds, geometric designs and calligraphy are common choices for the Ebru Artist. The brushes that are used here are made from horse-tail and rose wood. Once the artist is satisfied with his painting, the absorbent paper is gently laid onto the surface of the water. Then the paper is lifted off and hung up to dry.