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 past week I’ve exchanged daily e-mails with a writer who is investigating how English stained glass painting was done mid-17th century.
First up, we talked about the old names for different sizes of tracing brush. None of this ‘size 0’ or 2 or 4 and so on. Rather: crow, duck, goose and swan. These were taken from the names of the birds whose quills were used to hold the hairs together. That was the old-fashioned way: much nicer than numbers, don’t you think? We also talked about this.
Today you’ll see the techniques I use to paint a stained glass beast. Yes, you’ll discover how to do it all in a single firing. This is just like I did it for our students in the Netherlands in July. And it’s just like I did it one morning a month ago when Stephen had his camera on. I’ve got lots of demonstrations for you to watch – eight, in fact – so let’s get going now.
One last point before we start. You’ll need a good hour to read this article and watch the videos I’ve made for you. I’m saying this so you can be prepared. The information here is excellent. It’s also free. I don’t want you to miss out. So the best thing is, you know before you start how long the journey is.
A colleague from the Netherlands asks us something really useful:
As a novice, I have a burning question.
Say I experiment with your technique: so I paint an undercoat and then copy-trace the main lines from the design.
Now what if I make a mistake during tracing. What is the best procedure for correcting this mistake without ruining the work I’ve already done?”
This is such an excellent question, we’ll approach the answer from several different directions.
First, though, let’s step back a bit and give some context to the question.