Design & techniques

How to paint this stained glass bird

This download  gets you clear step-by-step instructions for painting this delightful bird roundel.

Design included.

Plus 4 bonus designs as well. Read on.

Note: uses oil-based kiln-fired glass painting as demonstrated in Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets from an English Stained Glass Studio.

Page through the guide and see what you’ll get:

[book id=’4′ /]

And that’s not all because you also get four bonus designs …

Bonus designs

Yes, as a free bonus, you’ll also get the designs to paint these four other lovely birds as well:

Bonus – you’ll also get the designs to paint these other four (4) birds as well

You get bonus designs for a kingfisher, blue tit, robin and woodpecker.

Guarantee

And you always have a 100% risk-free money-back guarantee. If want your money back for any reason, just write and say within 60 days, and we’ll oblige. We always want you to be completely happy with what you get from us.

Your offer

Here’s the offer:

• Instant access
• Bee-eater design plus step-by-step glass painting instructions
• 4 bonus designs for you to use
• 100% money-back guarantee

Stained glass birds – designs and instructions

Price: just $9.97

Click here and download now

The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall

“Thanks for the DVD’s. I watched them yesterday. They are 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. I imagine many people who think they can paint will just shut up and watch with an open-mouthed amazement as your brush dances across the glass. I know I did!” (J. Kenneth Leap, Runnemede, NJ, USA)

“Oh the ecstacy of  having your DVD 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, Durbanville, South Africa)

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“Just wanted to say many thanks for the DVDs which I started to watch yesterday. They are so well done and truly amazing to watch! It is so incredible to see the level of effort put into each piece in terms of preparation and work and it is clear that there is a lot to say about being properly organised. 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 it is good to know that I am not the only one.  Also I was really inspired watching the different textures of your paint so perfect, it made me want to paint immediately” (Anna Brostromer, London, UK)

“Your DVDs arrived quickly and playable in California. Thank you.  I found them chock-full of fascinating suggestions, ideas, illustrations and procedures” (Jay T. Marsden, Albany, California, USA)

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“Just finished watching The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall. Thank you for putting it together. Yes, I love your written guides – but, seeing the procedures performed on the television, I absorbed and understood far more” (Scott Russell, Brampton, Canada)

“It was very good to see the consistency and also the quantity of paint prepared for use, almost immediately, for tracing and flooding. So, the way that you mix the paint with the brush on the pallet, something that it would be difficult to explain only with words” (Fábio Leite de Moura Fonseca, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

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“Every time I watch I notice something new and I am enjoying putting the techniques to use” (Hector MacSween, Glasgow, Scotland)

“You are such a great help to me. And to be frank, you reflect a new style in the stained glass community, because I recall how it was back few years ago – when artists only held their artistic information for themselves and they didn’t share it with anyone! With you it is 180 degrees different: you give so much” (Hassan Al Saffar, Kuwait City, Kuwait)

” … a lot of helpful information, and whether I succeed exactly like you won’t matter because it has been worth the experience” (William Corbett, Dorchester, England)

“Thanks so much for The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall. I’m so glad I bought it as it’s so clear to watch and learn from and so easy to access. Also because it’s just so great to watch the project from beginning to end and see all your beautiful painting along the way” (Sara Burns, Telford, England)

“I’ve spent the last week watching The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall – brilliant! … You see the consistency of the paint. You see the friction of the brush passing through it. You see the paint flowing off the brush. You see the pressure you are using or the lightness of touch. This cannot be conveyed in a still image. I could also watch what you were doing on the palette. It was so helpful and has increased my confidence” (Louise Clarkson, Stroud, England)

“I received the Diamond Lights today, so I immediately stopped what I was working on, popped it into the DVD player and sat mesmerized watching all the techniques shown” (Steven Karnowski, Fenton, USA)

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“I must tell you how much I have loved watching The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall. It’s a brilliant DVD” (Hilary Gibbs, Yeovil, England)

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“The Diamond Lights arrived this pm and I put it into the laptop and sat transfixed for the whole program! Way to go! This is a totally professional presentation and so captivating! I could not stop or pause it till it was over. All I can say is WOW! And I have read the guides regarding the tracing, palette, highlights, staining etc. but to see it start to finish is so completely different. The old saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is absolutely right! This is a hit! No, a home-run! I will watch this over and over to glean every speck of information you so wonderfully placed there for me to get. I am amazed. Thank you!” (Jack Allen, LaPorte, Indiana, USA)

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“I watched the The Diamond Lights this evening (for, no doubt, the first time) and have already picked up lots of tips. My husband (formerly a lecturer in electronics) watched it with me and thought it was one of the best instructional videos he has ever seen” (Dorothy Collard, Basingstoke, England)

“I was at art college for many years and I never learned as much about brush-work as I learned from The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall” (Daniel Grundy, Bolton, England)

“This DVD [The Diamond Lights of Hampton Hall] is unsurpassed. Without a doubt it is one of the most important contributions to real glass painting and silver staining techniques in this last century. No disrespect to Patrick Reyntiens or Albinus Elskus, but it is true” (Graeme Mills, Hastings, England)

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“Just a quick note to firstly say thanks and congratulations on the Hampton Hall DVDs – they are most informative and very, very professionally done, not only the filming but I have to say your narrator who has the voice of a king” (Phill Kibblewhite, SGO Designer Glass , New Zealand)

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“An excellent set of DVDs, well worth the price” (David Gomm, author of The Stained Glass Newsletter, Provo, Utah, United States)

“I have watched the 2 DVDs and I think they are wonderful. I love the way you have set the stage for painting, the music you’ve chosen, the clear and concise commentary – the drama of it all is amazing and ‘Performance’ (in more ways than one) perfectly describes what is taking place. It is great to be instructed in such an inspiring way, and I look forward to watching these films many more times!” (Chris Bates-Brownsword, North Plympton, Australia)

“You should see us when we get going!”

Yes, indeed, wind in my sales and fire in my belly.

It’s all because David and I get so annoyed when people compromise their true standards. (You should see us when we really get going! It’s quite a sight – brushes flying everywhere.)

Here then are those 5 true stories …

1. Apprenticeship at Hardman’s

I was doing my apprenticeship at Hardman’s in the early part of the 21st century.

At the tender age of 40, I’d been employed to do anything that anyone else was too busy or too important to do.

Now, in traditional studios, there’s a hierarchy.

The master painter paints the faces and hands.

Beneath him – yes, it’s usually a “him” who presides at the top like this – there’s the painter who does the feet and maybe (just maybe) also some drapery.

And so it continues right down to the person at the bottom … who paints the borders.

And then, outside the paint room, you find the people who cut the glass for the painters, the people who put the windows together and solder them, and (right at the bottom)  the people who cement and polish them.

Thus the traditional studio, where the people who actually ensure the window is water-proof and fit for purpose are regarded as the lowest of the low …

(What a great way of motivating your staff!)

Well, even at the start, I wasn’t full-time in the cement room. Oh no, me, I was also cutting glass and leading up.

And we had a huge job on, with a ridiculous time-frame.

It was something stupid like having a month to make perfect copies of a set of 19th century Hardman’s windows, all 40 square yards of them, for export to a wedding chapel in Japan, whose owner was probably a terrifying gangster and prominent politician.

And two of the painters were away on holiday, while another one was ill.

So me and a fellow apprentice, name of Diego (great talent), were “seconded” as trainee glass painters.

We weren’t allowed in the paint room, of course. That was the “holy of holies” – not for the likes of us. But we were grudgingly told that we could “try to make ourselves useful” by copying the yards of borders that needed doing: towers and foliage and so forth. (Even to this day, I can do towers and foliage with my eyes shut.)

• Problem number 1: no brushes, since we’d been hired for other, more menial, tasks.
• Problem number 2: a severely cash-distressed studio owner.

What to do?

“Damn it,” I said. (I really did.)

“I don’t care how cash-distressed the owner is.

We’re not just getting the brushes that we need.

We’re getting brushes for all the painters.

And on top of that, make sure it’s the very best brushes that we get. Yes, the very best brushes for all the painters.”

(Such was the state of apathy and demoralization in the studio, that even the master glass painter himself had been hobbling along for months with brushes which had long since lost their spring. But that would be another story.)

And that’s how the cash-distressed owner was obliged to spend £200 on the very best brushes for everyone involved in painting this project.

A small sum in return for what the owner got. The work was finished on time. And it looked excellent. And yet it took a voice-raising show-down to force the owner to open his wallet. What can one say?

2. The BBC

Some of you in the UK may have seen a recent programme on BBC television about making and painting stained glass windows. It was part of a series devoted to crafts in the 21st century.

Well, the token glass painter didn’t do terribly well. This was a shame, but not completely unexpected.

Let’s step back 6 months …

There was a “knock-knock” in our e-mail post box, and here was this message to us (word for word):

Call me back, thanks, and I hope you can. I am working with the BBC on a stained glass project, and I require reference books on this subject, moving through all the stages, i.e. how to start mixing paint, what you require, tools etc.! And matting, badgering, highlights, traced lines – everything. The budget is low, so I’d like to be advised to buy the right books. Please advise – thanks.”

I duly rang the person back.  Let’s not go into too much detail here. But suffice it to say they didn’t have the budget to buy the e-book. And they definitely weren’t going to spend any money of their own. All they wanted was free information. So they took the free downloads (right-hand column, a little way up) and off they went.

6 months later – embarrassment on national TV. A wasted opportunity for the glass painter in question. What can one say?

Postscript: David and I don’t have a problem with “free”. We are perfectly willing to give our time for free. We write to you. We answer your questions. We’re interested in the work you do.

If anyone writes to us with very particular circumstances, we will always do what we can for them.

But we can’t and won’t waste our own time – and yours! – helping people who won’t invest in themselves.

Intermission

Do you see the theme which is emerging here?

You remember that ghastly advertisement from L’Oreal: “Because I’m worth it!” Well, I saw a recent Facebook thread which said that this slogan summed up the very worst of modern values.

Yes, I agree, but that’s because it’s all to do with cosmetics, which are rarely even skin-deep.

By contrast, when it comes down to your timeless and focused devotion to the craft of stained glass painting, you are worth it.

L’Oreal has just done its best to contaminate a wholly noble sentiment.

And we don’t have to let them get away with it. That’s the point. The point is, you are worth it.

Here are a few more cracking good tales for you to enjoy. I wonder if you’ve had similar experiences?

3. The Architect’s Off-Cuts

Another true story. A round, red-faced man called at the studio and made a lot of swagger about how he was a prominent architect and was just refurbishing his Georgian townhouse with the very best of everything and could we please make him a “jewel of a window” using some off-cuts so as to keep the cost down?

“Off-cuts” are those bits of glass left-over from earlier projects.

Now, fair enough: people never want to pay more than they have to. That’s perfectly understandable.

But we are certainly better than his suggestion implied. It wasn’t a question of the money here. We never got that far.

It was the mere idea that, appropriate or not, we should use off-cuts for his “jewel of a window”.

We’ve actually no problem with using off-cuts. No doubt, if the project had gone ahead, we would indeed have used some off-cuts. But only if they’d been absolutely right.

This is all the same point: we designers / makers / painters / artists (or whatever we are) mustn’t ever allow anyone to corner us into a place where we will end up making something that isn’t worthy of us or the client or the building in question.

Yes, people have so many needs that it’s sometimes difficult not to get tangled up in them. But we’re not doing them any favours by making them something that is less than our best. And it’s not good for our reputation either.

4. Travelling

Someone making leaded lights about 200 miles away from us decided that we were too far to come for an intensive glass painting course at our studio.

They said:

If only you were closer. But it would take me a day to get to you. And then I would need to stay in a hotel or something. I reckon I’ll just find someone closer”.

I said:

That’s your decision. All the same, people travel to us from Peru, from New Zealand, from New Jersey, from Japan, from Canada, from Denmark, and even from Russia”.

But what can one really say? I mean, if they don’t believe in themselves enough to travel 200 hundred miles for a course that’s backed by hundreds of testimonials, that’s their business (no “sour grapes” on my part here since our courses are always fully booked many months in advance). It’s actually very sad – they are worth it, if only they could see it.

Maybe they were waiting for me to offer them a discount.

But that just proves the point.

5. A final tale of brushes – Oh, and paint

We’ve known people who will rather spend £3 pounds every month on a new brush which only lasts a few weeks than spend £10 on a really good brush that will last them a year or more and do the most fabulous strokes.

And people who’ll waste money buying an ounce of glass paint at a time when 4 ounces would actually last them 12 times as long.

Just always get the best you can afford.

Don’t “make do and mend” when it comes to your work. Yes, re-cycle and work frugally, by all means. But believe in yourself and invest in yourself. Invest in the whole centuries-long craft and tradition of making stained glass properly and respectfully.

All the same, because the world’s economy is in such a mess, there’ll inevitably be forces at work which will conspire to move each one of us away from where we should be and remain. Our advice is: don’t go there.

If you’ve got any tales of resistance, compromise or even cosmetics that you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear from you, so please just post them right below.

All the best,

"I'm only trying to talk about something other than glass painting!"

Hey there! Thanks for calling by. You remember how we got here?

I rashly said let’s talk about something other than glass painting for a change …

And it was all because someone left me!

Here’s goes.

I reckon it’s best if we chop things into two sections.

Right now we’ll look at over-soldering and adding a patina.

Next time round, we’ll look at gold leaf.

And now, to give you a sense of where we’re going this time and next, here’s gold leaf on top of an over-soldered lead.

Gold Leaf

Gold leaf on over-soldered lead

Now before anyone throws up their hands and says, “Oh my gosh, how vulgar!”, let me just say the gold lead had a purpose, and there’s a moral here for anyone who’s interested in stained glass design.

This is a small front door panel.

In particular, it’s one of two panels – I’ll show you the other one in just a moment – for two luxurious holiday cottages which are set in the middle of a sprawling apple orchard about 30 miles from here.

So the idea was for us to design and make two panels which could “brand” each one of these two cottages on all the relevant literature.

And also to give newcomers a visual means of quickly knowing whether they’d gone to the right cottage.

Here’s the other panel:

Silver leaf on over-soldered lead

See what I mean?

In the daylight, as you approach each cottage, you can’t see the painting until you’re really close but you can see the glittering colour of the lead work.

So that’s why we used leaf.

I just wanted to reassure you that Williams & Byrne never decorate for decoration’s sake. Oh no, it’s got to have a function.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is all for next time. This time it’s …

Over-soldering and patina

Over-soldering is when you apply a layer of solder over the entire surface of all the leads.

(We’d usually do this after the cement has dried.)

This will get all the copper-foilists really hopping mad – they’re all so keen on soldering being super-smooth – because the point of over-soldering is to leave a slightly rough and artisanal surface.

Why?

Decoration

You see it makes a change from dull flat lead.

Also …  it gives new strength to a panel.

To be clear, our main reason is always decoration (we get our local blacksmith to forge us some lovely shaped tie-bars whenever reinforcement is required).

So we tend to over-solder for panels which get examined close-up.

Fibonacci

That’s why we over-soldered the Fibonacci window: it’s the entrance to a large Victorian rectory, and, strange to say, all kinds of important businessmen are forever coming and going for meetings with the hyper-active and mathematically super-endowed owner.

Yes and we also over-soldered the literary agent’s rose window as you can see just below:

The literary agent's rose window

And that’s why – meaning, decoration – we over-soldered Kate Charles the crime writer’s window: nothing to do with her being a crime writer and thus our being fearful of a mysterious accident …

Actually it’s on a stairway landing, and writers and bishops and journalists and CIA agents and diplomats and Oxford historians (I kid you not) are forever walking past.

Here’s a shot – Sorry, Kate, here’s a photograph – of it just before it left the studio for installation:

"Me I'm a really decorated angel. What's more I'm also really strong!"

So a nicely texture layer of solder over the entire surface of the lead is what we’re after.

Once that’s done, we let the panel cool, de-grease it (very important), then apply a patina to give a bronze-like look to the work.

Big and small

You can use this technique for architectural stained glass like the pieces above.

You can also use it for autonomous panels and wall-lights.

And also, as you’ll see today, for hangers and sun-catchers.

It really makes them stand out.

Enough talking – let’s watch the show!

Just sit back and hit the Play button.

So you see how it’s done?

Risks

Always consider:

• You might burn through the lead in places
• You might crack the glass
• The patina can damage paint and enamel if it gets in contact with them

Just balance the risks against the benefits.

Practice before you do it for real.

Hazards

Always consider:

• Solder fumes
• The retained heat of the leads for many minutes after you finish soldering

Just ventilate your workplace properly and don’t touch the panel until it’s cool.

Your own tips

Herman van Rongen, a colleague from the Netherlands, says: to control the darkness of the patina, you can add water to dilute it (e.g. 1 part water to 5 parts patina). Certainly worth trying if your patina makes the leads too dark.

And here’s a comment from a colleague, Margie Cohen, in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania:

I have a visceral response to the words “patina” and “glass paint” used in the same sentence. I even get the creeps hearing the two words used on the same day. People have to be really really careful because it’s just so easy for patina to run tracing paint. And if you get it on enamel … Well, even diluted patina will ruin (as in, “it will disappear”) your beautiful enamel or rouge paint in a split second. So be extra, extra, EXTRA careful with patina and painted glass

Especially watch out for …

This:

• Don’t apply the solder too thickly. The whole idea is to spread it fairly thinly. A little blob on the end of your iron will go several inches
• Don’t let the iron get too hot or too cold: use a “snake” of lead just like you see in the video

"Who's a pretty boy?"

These are really important tips.

You have been told!

OK so that’s all for now.

Next time you’ll see how to apply gold leaf.

Feel free to ask questions and we’ll always tell you what we know.

All the best,
Stephen

"Why's it's always me that has to wait to be dressed up in gold?"

P.S.The saint’s head was first traced with water-based stained glass paint (see Part 1 of Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets from an English Stained Glass Studio) then shaded with oil (all as described in Part 2 of Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets from an English Stained Glass Studio).

P.S. And this is really important – if you want to know how we shaded the back of this saint’s head with silver stain – I mean, how confident are you with shading and blending silver stain, and knowing it’ll fire correctly? – then you really must go here and discover the proven techniques. Click here.