This is a detail from one of a north-facing pair of lancets we’ve just completed.
The theme for these two lancets – “At the going down of the sun …”.
(Opposite them, south-facing, a second pair, whose theme is “… and in the morning || We will remember them”. You can find the full poem here.)
And I want now to take time-out from the work I’m doing on some new designs to talk you through the techniques I used to make the poppies.
Maybe then, you too can use these same steps in the work you do.
In the studio where I learned, one man drew the design, another cut the glass, a third man painted it, a fourth assembled the glass in lead and did the soldering, while a fifth cemented the finished window, picked it clean and polished it.
Everyone’s work sometimes looks a mess. But what matters is what it looks like at the end. For example, the other day, Stephen caught me “softening” some trace-lines, and he was struck by something he saw me do. (Softening is where you lay down a wash or matt on top of unfired trace-lines, then blend gently while the wash is wet. This turns the trace-lines into gorgeous shadows.)
What he saw me do was: he saw me carry on – even though what was on the light-box looked absolutely awful.
Today I want to share some understanding of two big topics:
I’ll even talk face-to-face with you over my light-box and show you what I mean: such is the joy of video (for those of you who have this technique-packed e-book).