As you’ll know from our studio manual, Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets from an English Stained Glass Studio (you can get a sample chapter here): once you’ve finished all the tracing, shading and highlighting you want to do with glass paint and water (and gum Arabic), then it’s often a good idea to carry on with glass paint mixed with oil (and no gum Arabic).
And then – you fire your glass just once.
OK, so the advantages of oil are … ?
This follows on from a recent post about the 5th benefit of undercoating, and also from “The Beastly Lion of Wolsey Towers” – episode #1, in which you saw how to undercoat a large piece of glass.
Today, cleaning your badger.
This is important because, dirty, your badger will wreck your matts and shadows.
Clean, it will serve you wonderfully for life.
So if your matts and shadows aren’t working, sure: it might be you’re being heavy-handed. All the same, your badger just might need a simple clean.
OK, something new. A mini-series. Starts today. 12 episodes. Each video will reveal a glass painting technique-in-use. And step-by-step you’ll see the methods we used to paint and stain “The Beastly Lion of Wolsey Towers”.
Watch episode #1. It’s here.
This is the biggest thing people get wrong when they use a badger blender (the big flat one: not the small round one). They hold it delicately. They hold it as if it were a feather duster.