Stained Glass Painting with Oil

Essential Tips: Part 1

I’m now spending a few days in charge here while Stephen gets on with some particularly difficult painting plus puts the finishing touches to a documentary we’ve made.

Anyway, yesterday I spent a morning painting with oil. And what a calm and happy time it’s been. Not that it isn’t when I’m working with water. It’s just that, with oil, you can pretty much start and stop whenever you want.

And – rather than having a fixed idea of the effect you definitely want to achieve (as is the case with water) – you have the time to push the oil paint here and there, and reflect on what looks best, changing it as you see fit.

So here are some key points about working with oil on top of unfired water-based paint.

If you’re already a “convert”, these tips will come as a handy reminder.

And if you’re new to oil, they’ll show you its amazing potential.

So I’ll start off with 5 tips today, then we’ll continue the series the day-after-tomorrow (Wednesday) and see how we get on.

Stained Glass Painting with Oil – Essential Tips: Part 2

Hello again, it’s David here, while Stephen keeps nice and busy (and happy too, I trust) with some fiendishly difficult painting and the exciting new film project we’re working on.

Which leaves me in charge of the blog so that’s why I took the executive decision to remind you of / excite you with the delights of painting with oil on top of unfired water-based glass paint.

And if you missed part 1 of my essential tips to oil-based glass painting, head off there right now and come back when you’re ready.

Now a number of you wrote and asked whether oil-based glass painting is only suitable for advanced or professional glass painters.

So let’s deal with that question before getting to grips with today’s essential tips …

Your Tracing Brush, the Ballpoint Pen, and Zero-Gravity

It is our strength – your strength and mine – that we learn from our experiences. But this can also be our weakness: we are both blessed and cursed when we pick up a tracing brush.

Blessed – because we already know to grip it like a pen.

Cursed – because we expect it to function like a pen.

And it doesn’t.

Or so I thought until I learned about the pens which astronauts use to write in zero-gravity space: I’ve just discovered a helpful similarity …

About mixing a small quantity of glass paint

Part 1

small quantity of glass paint

We’re glad to hear your questions. They tell us what’s important to you – and we want to know, because your perspectives aren’t the same as ours. For instance, we design and paint to earn a living. Many of you do it because you love it. We love it too. But we also earn a living from it – it’s not the same. It can’t be.

Here’s a familiar theme: how to mix your glass paint.

Our approach is totally at odds with the recipes you read in many books and with what happens in most classes.