The undercoat

Here’s what made us realise we had to film these episodes for you: a few weeks ago, someone commented on one of our short YouTube videos.

I see what’s happened here. The video title had raised their expectations. It suggested they could learn a skill like how to paint stained glass (true) in minutes (false).

Like “How to change the lightbulb on your Chrysler”.

But “How to paint stained glass” is not like that. It’s not like that at all.

David’s apprenticeship took 7 years (and counting), and mine was 4 (that’s why I can’t paint the same images he can).

Isn’t this a big part of the pleasure of why we take the pain to learn new skills? Time passes. We grow older. And along with the wrinkles comes the knowledge that this year we’ve improved our mastery of a skill: this time last year, we couldn’t have succeeded the way we can today. So time’s passage is now marked out by more than wrinkles. We’ve learned to achieve results we couldn’t achieve before.

But indeed the fault was ours for the video’s misleading title. It was click bait, which is always silly.

And what this comment made us realise is, we want to work with people who don’t need sensational titles.

We also want to work with people who are happy with longer videos videos (except when 5 minutes is all it takes). So if it takes 90 minutes or 3 hours, they’ll put the time in.

Here is episode 1 (a mere 11 minutes, but don’t panic, there’s much more to come). Download the video here. Watch it below. Afterwards, ask a question: if we’re not bound by client confidentiality, we’ll reply (though if you ask us “how do you … ?”, then sometimes we’ll have to say “It’s in this online course“, because teaching – like learning – takes a lot of time).

And, to be direct with you, the purpose of this series is not to instruct you but to offer you a glimpse of studio life – so you see how things work out in practise, which is often different from the theory (like when David tries to undercoat his glass, below).

And so, returning to the YouTube comment, to be direct with you: this really is like watching men flying jets.

The difference is, since we don’t cut out anything apart from a few seconds when I move the camera, these episodes will reveal a lot.

What they reveal, however, depends on you – you’ll all pick up on many different things:

Episode 2, next Friday.