It’s time and experience we’re offering you here: you can spend your valuable days and evenings experimenting with brushes, testing different paints and media.

And eventually you’ll get there.

Or you can spend a few hours with these true-life films we’ve filmed for you – you’ll be happy and amazed how fast you’ll learn the skills.

“Buying your films was my best investment for a long time” (Maralyn O’Keefe)

You’ll learn faster when you can watch and copy

And you don’t need to take our word for it. It’s our students who insist these films really are that good:

“I was at art college for many years and I never learned as much about brush work as I just learned from The Diamond Lights. I found the pacing and the recapping, covering different aspects of the process, so inspiring and motivating” (Daniel Grundy)

“Oh, the ecstasy of having your films to work from. Oh, the agony of wondering just how much better my previous projects would have been had I known what I know now” (Barbara Bennett)

“Fantastic in every way. I didn’t expect anything less from you but I wanted to tell you that the narration, music and editing are really superb. Timeless and elegant – just like your work” (J. Kenneth Leap)

How to learn from our experience

In our studio – it’s a busy place – we’ve a ‘no bystander’ rule: it makes good sense that everyone who’s here must work.

So these three films are certainly the closest you’ll ever come to watching while we work.

The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall

You will discover the key techniques to trace and silver-stain these windows

This film is for those people who wish to improve how accurately they trace.The Diamond Lights is actually a set of four short films about tracing, highlighting and silver staining.

The first film (64 minutes) explores the techniques in detail.

The next three films (20 minutes each) revise key points and show you new ones.

Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes.

Also included: 35 PDF designs for you to use. This is a further reason this film is excellent for people starting out – all these designs for you to copy. Glass painting is much easier when you’re working from good designs like these.

“This film is so informative, I will enjoy coming back time after time to study your brilliant techniques in depth” (Pam Bennett, Devon).

Watch anywhere, anytime – as often as you want

The Heraldic Arms of Hampton Hall

How to paint this stained glass coat of arms

The second film in the series, The Heraldic Arms, involves a wide range of techniques and shows you how to paint a stained glass coat of arms.

The Heraldic Arms is “the next best thing to taking a work-shop and spending time at Williams & Byrne. Along with their other films, this presentation gives you a perspective that is invaluable” (anonymous postcard from the USA).

Uses glass paint, oil, enamels, silver stain and multiple firings to build up line, shadow, texture and colour.

Runs for: 1 hour 25 minutes.

The Heraldic Arms is “Fascinating, well produced, thorough – and thoroughly engaging! A ‘must-see’ for anyone interested in glass painting” (Allison Bartlett)

The Master & the Beast

In a single firing – tracing, shading, highlighting, painting with oil / painting with propylene glycol

Part 3 in the series, The Master & the Beast, is a study-based documentary with two full-length case studies of the ‘single-firing’ method from start to finish.

The single-firing method: all your tracing, shading and highlighting, front and back, in just one firing. You start with the traditional water-based glass paint, then move on to other media like Oil of Tar or propylene glycol.

All in just one firing.

The reason it’s important is, it looks wonderful. And it also saves you time and money.

Here’s what you see: undercoating (2 demonstrations) | copy-tracing (2 demonstrations) | strengthening (x 2) | shading and reinstating (x 1) | flooding (x 2) | highlights and softened highlights (x 2) | oil wash and oil shadows (1 demonstration) | tracing and shading with propylene glycol (1 demonstration).

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.

“Brilliant” (Bridget Saunders, London) “Great filming, and the dialogue adds such a full description of the whole process” (Hassan Al Saffar, Kuwait).

See everything close-up, watch again and again

Best wishes,

The Williams & Byrne Stained Glass Studio
Church Farm Studios
Stanton Lacy
Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 2AE
United Kingdom

T: +44 (0) 1584 856724

E: here

Watch real projects

These three films show you glass painting in the real world. There’s nothing make-believe or simplified. These are real projects which went through our studio. That’s why glass painters testify they are so very helpful to the work they do:

“These films are so well done and truly amazing to watch. What I found incredibly useful was the narrative explaining the thoughts and approach the glass painter has to the work – especially in relation to the tracing work (which always makes me feel really nervous)” (Anna Brostromer)

Informative, and also fascinating

These three films are very useful, so don’t be surprise how you’ll want to watch them again and again:

“I found them chock-full of fascinating suggestions, ideas, illustrations and procedures. One thing was obvious: that they need viewing several times, because there’s too much to be absorbed in just one viewing” (Jay Marsden, California, USA)

“I watch them over and over and see something new each time” (Jumelle Daniel)

The whole point is to give you access to our busy, true-life studio. Certainly you can come in person and we hope you will. But if that’s not practical right now, then you can watch and learn wherever you are:

“The explanation of tracing, firing and siver staining were excellent: really clear and easy to follow” (Andrew Douglas)

“Wonderful! I can’t wait to try the techniques” (Steve McKelvey, Indiana, USA)

Watch and learn

Whether you work alone or with others in a class or studio, everyone learns more when they see clearly what it is they must copy:

“Your videos are wonderful. If a picture paints a thousand words then a video paints a million. You see the consistency of the paint – see the friction of the brush through it. You can see the paint flowing off the brush. You can see the pressure you are using or the lightness of touch. This cannot be conveyed in a still image. I could also see exactly what you were doing on the palette. This was all so helpful and has increased my confidence” (Louise Clarkson)

Yes, books are excellent for theory, and you’ll find these films are wonderful for real practice:

“I love your written guides. But seeing the procedures performed on television, I understood much more” (Scott Russell, Brampton, Canada)

“I was practically glued to the video from start to finish. Lots of tips and details. An excellent teaching medium” (Ivan Lieu)

These films make it far easier for you to understand and copy the skills you want to learn:

“They should teach like this in schools and universities – the world would look a whole lot brighter! (Saskia Lupini-Klute, Brussels, Belgium)

“It’s amazing how seeing something on video has actually given me a much better understanding of what I need to do. I’ve had so many problems with cracking and I’ve tried all kinds of things with gum Arabic and mixing to resolve it. But now, seeing it on video, I’ve just been laying it on far too thickly and I hadn’t understood how brush must actually move the paint around. Brilliant: can’t wait to have another go now” (Angela Townsend Watford, England)

“After watching these films, I’ve been truly inspired and successful in my painting endeavours. I now know where I was going wrong e.g. in loading my brush, how I kept my paint, and also how I restored it. I’ve been doing a lot glass painting this past week and, lo and behold, the kiln opens and – they have all worked! Yay! Buying your films was my best investment for a long time” (Maralyn O’Keefe)