By John A Dumergue

When I was about nine or ten years old, (goodness me, that’s seventy years ago,) we used to play marbles at school. It involved drawing a circle with chalk on concrete, then each player would put, say two marbles, in the centre of the circle. Then each player would use a larger marble as their weapon to knock out marbles from the centre. Each weapon marble would need to be a different colour for each player.

We had to kneel on the ground and using your thumb, flick the weapon marble out of your hand, at the marbles in the chalk circle. When you knock a marble out of the circle you may have another turn until you miss and the next person
has their turn. When the circle is empty the person with most marbles is the winner. We used to keep what we won, but some would play and return marbles won to the owners.

Recently I purchased marbles from a toy shop, not to play the game with others but for Roller Art. The came in a string bag with a label that had instructions on the inside. My mother made my original bag with a string pull and the other kids owned similar ones.

What is Roller Art
Roller Art is basically using a marble coated in acrylic paint then rolled onto paper. Some artists place a sheet of paper in the bottom of a cardboard box then place some coated marbles on the paper. Then tilt the box in all directions to let the marbles make their mark. The marbles go everywhere with the titling, a bit like a drunk on a bike would be a good analogy.

I did not use a cardboard box, but used an A4 picture frame and removed the glass then placed the paper inside. The frame was the buffer for the coated marbles. A table tennis ball was also used for some works but this left a thick line of paint. Another method is the place say- three blobs of paint in different colours on to the middle of the paper close to each other then roll two of three clean marbles through the colours by tilting.

My first painting had black lines, with a few areas coloured in. The second one with black lines had colours added plus gold leaf and rose gold leaf. The third had black and coloured lines, and the fourth had coloured lines only. Another idea is just use black paint only, this looks effective in a black frame also.

Roller Art would be a great activity for children in the class room. They would have a work of art to take home to their parents who could then purchase a reasonably priced frame to suit say, A4 size.