It is our strength – your strength and mine – that we learn from our experiences. But this can also be our weakness: we are both blessed and cursed when we pick up a tracing brush.
Blessed – because we already know to grip it like a pen.
Cursed – because we expect it to function like a pen.
And it doesn’t.
Or so I thought until I learned about the pens which astronauts use to write in zero-gravity space: I’ve just discovered a helpful similarity …
At best we’re used to hard-nosed pens and pencils. At worst we always use a keyboard or a touch-screen on our smart-phone. That’s why I owe you this reminder about how to hold your tracing brush. You’ll also find a very helpful video, so you see exactly what I mean.
When you trace a stained glass design, you trace one line after another. So you trace the first line, and then the second, and the third and so on, until you’ve copied all the lines.
My point to you today is, you must study the design before you start. But not just that, because the crucial bit is this: you must decide the sequence of your lines. Decide? Yes, decide. In a moment, you’ll get two walk-throughs. But to start with, just take your design and …
When you watch The Master & the Beast, you’ll see exactly how to do all your glass painting in a single firing, layer upon layer until your piece is finished.
Now one important point about painting layer upon layer is: you wait for the previous layer to dry before you paint on top of it. The reason is, when you paint on wet paint, you risk damaging the layers underneath. That’s why you wait until the paint is dry – because the gum Arabic will set. So a question I’m often asked is, Do I use a hair-dryer?