International university students who come to study in Turkey's Trabzon province in the Black Sea region have been learning "ebru", the Turkish art of marbling, via public courses, helping them to adapt quicker and better to the country's culture.
Students from various countries such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Azerbaijan have been taking classes on marbling art in a course opened by the Ortahisar Public Education Center and Evening Art School.
Songül Kartal, instructor of the art course, told the Anadolu Agency (AA) that they have been trying to promote the Turkish art of marbling both in the country and abroad for the past 15 years, and university students coming to the city have been very interested in learning the art.
"Not only do they promote the art of marbling with their social media posts, but they also promote our culture and country," Kartal said, adding that the students become like volunteer cultural ambassadors for Turkey.
Oroz Salmoorbekov, a Kyrgyz student at Karadeniz Technical University's (KTU) Faculty of Letters told AA that he first saw the art of marbling on a TV series he was watching to improve his Turkish language skills.
Saying that he had long "wondered how the paint on water was transferred to paper", Salmoorbekov said after a bit of researching he came across Kartal.
Salmoorbekov said that the art of marbling is not known in his country, adding that he wants to start his own workshop on the art when he returns back to his home country.
Madina Abdullaev from Kazakhstan, who is a student at KTU's Faculty of Theology, said: "In our country, this art is applied to carpets, but the way the paint is taken from the surface of the water with paper, (this technique) is not known. I will continue doing this art when I return to my country."
The way the colors move on water, the variety of tones "calms me and evokes this sense of excitement in me," she added.
Also called paper marbling, "ebru" is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily water and then transferring these patterns onto paper.
