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 … ?
Glass painters often ask why I use oil before I fire my tracing and shading.
You’ll soon see. It’s all to do with the lovely effects that oil lets you quickly make.
It’s the fourth day of this intensive technique-focused glass painting course for our five long-haul students – four colleagues from different states of the USA, and one from Kuwait. (For the 90-second video intro, please see here.)
Yesterday and today: oil.
The case against oil: it’s smelly, and it’s messy. You need extra palettes and extra brushes. Students need to learn how, once the oil has seeped down and been absorbed by the unfired water-based paint beneath, the paint itself becomes fragile. And another thing: it’s a good idea to adjust the firing schedule so the volatile fumes can burn off and escape.
All in all it’s rather inconvenient. Hmmmm – no wonder it isn’t taught in college or class. Too much nuisance.
So, the case for oil is what, I wonder …
It is 3:12 in the morning. I am wide awake as I often, listening to those radio podcasts which I can’t hear during the day because I prefer silence when I paint glass (or J.S. Bach).
Suddenly, in the middle of the night, I am attacked by a sudden fit of breathless spluttering, a violent seizure.