These past several days, I’ve spent time testing an ingredient which, added in small quantities to my usual lump of glass paint mixed with water and gum Arabic, so far appears to possess these helpful properties:

• It slows down the rate at which the lump dries out
• Reduces the time it takes to restore my dried-out palette each morning and post-lunch / phone calls / meetings etc.
• Improves the evenness of my copy-traced lines
• Helps with flooding because the paint is held together more smoothly than before
• Permits crisp highlights and wondrous softened highlights
• Still allows me to do everything else I like to do like ‘ordinary’ softened lines or softened half-tones …

All this is wonderful. Almost too good to be true.

But …

We must be careful what we wish for

Myself, I love the ‘bother’ of glass painting: I adore the fact I am required to devote myself to managing my palette and can’t just squeeze glass paint from a tube like fine artists do with oil paints or acrylics.

It’s true: I am absorbed by the complications and also competent at solving them, which means: I’m happy. Really happy.

Next steps …

So what happens next is, I continue testing, taking photos, writing up my notes.

And then I’ll put this out to some of you so you can decide for yourselves and add to the debate.

After all, with all these benefits, we must be scrupulous in finding out the risks.