It’s been ages since we posted new videos and newsletters. There were good reasons for the silence, but what we want to tell you now is that we’ll soon be sending you new videos and newsletters again – if, that is, you’d like to get them.

What we plan to do is cover two distinct topics each month, one post or video every fortnight for each topic.

The first topic is the key techniques of kiln-fired stained glass painting – what they are, how to use them, and how to adjust them to a particular project. This topic will be very useful to beginners and newcomers, though less so to the more accomplished and those of you who’ve taken our various online courses.

Therefore, to broaden the appeal, the second topic will be an account of a big restoration project we accomplished:

We plan to go through all the stages with you, both practical (like drawing, cutting, taking apart, re-leading, painting and over-painting) and administrative (planning, costing, management).

We have a huge amount of material to share with you since, one morning every week, we set aside the time to take photos and make videos.

But, such was my loathing of all things digital in the time of covid, it was a policy of mine to avoid screen-time whenever possible, both as a consumer and a “maker”.

That’s why the material is all sitting on our flash drives just waiting to bounce out in your direction …

Now this second topic will, unlike the first, be useful to all levels, provided you aren’t so utterly devoted to God-less modern art that you think anything figurative, truthful and beautiful should go the way of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

In other words, if you don’t like 19th century stained glass painting, you won’t be happy with our plans …

… because 19th century stained glass is otherwise what you’ll get a lot of in the coming weeks and months.

This will all be free, though there will be a discrete option to make a financial contribution just in case that now-so-weird concept of “disposable income” is still a reality to anyone out there.

But payment will be optional: if you want to learn, we’re here to show you the techniques which work for us.

However, we will shamelessly promote our first book from time to time and ask you to buy it if you haven’t already done so, if only so that we don’t have to repeat ourselves endlessly about the brushes, tools and paints we use.

And, with equal shamelessness, we will also ask you if you want to buy the occasional special feature where something has taken us a special and praiseworthy effort to prepare: there must be some reward for sacrificing ourselves on a keyboard to convey to you the methods and delights of traditional stained glass painting.

Of course, it will be your choice to pay or not, and we’ll be none the wiser as well as none the richer, and you’ll always get a huge amount for free. (Don’t expect me to repeat myself, however, concerning what’s already been delightfully expressed behind a very occasional paywall.)

There is, I must tell you, going to be one enormous change that you will feel. We are moving to a different platform. This is because it will leave more time not just for our other work but also for the work we do for you.

The new platform is called Substack which some you will know already. For those of you who don’t know what Substack is: how you’ll feel the change is that you’ll be able to choose whether to hear from me by email, or to read the lessons and watch the videos inside the Substack app for phone / notepad or on the Substack webpage.

Ourselves, for what it’s worth, we’d suggest you go the latter route: if everything’s delivered to the app or webpage, our forthcoming lessons won’t clutter up your Inbox, and they’ll all be neatly ordered in one place for you to read whenever you wish.

Here’s a screenshot from the web:

And here’s one from my phone:

So much nicer, we think, than wading through a list of emails, searching in vain for the particular lesson you really need right now …

But who are we to lay down the law for you? We’ve had rather too much of that these last couple of years, haven’t we, and I don’t mind who knows that’s what I think.

As a taster, why not go here and watch a video of that big restoration project we’ll tell you all about in uncompromising, breathless and illuminating detail.

It’s a time-lapse video of the installation, is what this is:

If you have questions about any of this by all means send an email though I imagine I’ll likely reply with one big Q&A email rather than answering each message individually – time at keyboard just isn’t a love of mine. I even draft these messages by hand … this here is my drafting scrawl:

That’s how much I loath computers and abhor what they do to our thoughts and words and feelings.

And now for what I understand from 30 years in business the young Turks (“Racist!”) of marketing call “The Ask”: